CHED, HEIs give special consideration to CDSL students

FILE: Commission on Higher Education in UP Diliman Campus, Quezon City (Photo by patrickroque01/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

MANILA – The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) inked a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with several private higher education institutions (HEIs) on Tuesday that grants special consideration to students affected by the closure of Colegio de San Lorenzo (CDSL).

In a press conference live-streamed on Facebook, CHED Chairperson Prospero de Vera III said the MOA included the waiving of some provisions in the existing Manual of Regulations for Private Higher Education (MORPHE), considered the “general law governing private universities.”

“We are authorizing or allowing the universities to exercise discretion and exercise flexibility in how they determine the units that will be credited, the way by which they can check if the students would have passed, and would have learned from courses that were taken earlier,” he said.

However, De Vera noted that this will only apply to the current batch of CDSL transferees, particularly graduating students.

The CHED said the waived provisions would make the admission of transferees much easier.

“We are waiving the provisions of the MORPHE so that they can easily accept the students, ganun din naman sa (likewise in) giving Latin honors. But of course, these provisions are still subject to administrative discretion of the admitting HEI,” CHED Executive Director Cinderella Filipina Benitez-Jaro said.

Meanwhile, some of the HEIs that took in the affected students said they were willing to extend a flexible setup to the learners.
“We need to evaluate their courses. But because each university and private HEI would have institutional subjects, these institutional subjects are developed by the institution. So what we need is to waive these institutional subjects so they could easily graduate within this time, and they could have timely graduation,” Dr. Gisela D.A. Luna, president of the Trinity University of Asia, said.

“I think especially with the graduating batch and if they will be graduating with honors, it is of value to them. That in spite of what happened to them, they will be able to continue with their quest for the honors. So it could be a potential look into [making] sure that the grades would be carried over,” Dr. Caroline Mariane Enriquez, Our Lady of Fatima University president, said.

To date, 304 out of almost 700 CDSL students have transferred to other schools, while 429 documents of the students have been released.