1. PAASCU Refuses CHED’s Two-Million-Peso Offer
Yesterday was Holy Innocents’ Day.
Yesterday, I tweeted, “PAASCU refuses two-million-peso offer from CHED to re-
align its accreditation instruments according to CMO 46 s. ’12.”
My friend, Isagani Cruz, the distinguished educator, tweeted in response: “This is
not a Holy Innocents Day joke, is it?”
I assured him it was not.
Soon after Christmas, after Chairman Patricia Licuanan thought that she had shut
down discussion on Outcomes- and Typology-based Quality Assurance
presumably with the CHED en banc approval of CMO 46, s. 2012 (“presumably”
because the uploaded version only carries the signature of Chairperson Licuanan),
PAASCU received a an original copy of a Memorandum of Agreement already
signed by Atty. Julito D. Vitriolo, Executive Director of CHED, and Patricia
Licuanan, Chairperson, CHED, with an urgent message that the Executive Director
of PAASCU and I as the PAASCU President sign it immediately.
I refuse to sign it.
In short, the MoA reads: “….WHEREAS, CHED wish (sic) to provide incentives
and support to accreditation bodies in their effort to shift to outcomes-based
evaluation and the harmonization of their criteria…

2. “NOW THEREFORE for and in consideration of the foregoing premises, the
parties hereto hereby agree as follows:
1. CHED shall (1.1) provide funding assistance to PAASCU amounting to Two
Million Pesos to revise their instruments for program and institutional accreditation
in line with outcome-based quality assurance and harmonize their criteria and
measures with those of the other accreditation agencies.
2. PAASCU shall (2.1) Utilize the finds provided by CHED for the purpose
indicated in Sec. 1 item 1.1 [as quoted in the previous paragraph] subject to the
usual accounting and auditing rules and regulations. (2.2) Submit accreditation
instruments to CHED.”
Last Nov. 23, 2012, the General Assembly of PAASCU formally requested CHED
to postpone its approval of Outcomes-Based and Typology-Based Quality
Assurance. On the one hand, this was because the PAASCU members wish to
focus their energies on the implementation of K-12. On the other hand, it was
because it continued to see serious flaws in the proposed QA program.
CHED’s response was first to approve CMO 46, 2012 on December 11, 2012, then
to write me a letter purporting to explain why its approval cannot be postponed. Its
“reasoning” is for the books: “CHED is forced by many imperatives to pursue an
iterative reform process that begins with an imperfect plan. Such imperfection may
lead to errors but correcting them might also lead serendipitously to unanticipated
solutions that would not have been discovered had the mistakes not been made”
(Letter of Licuanan to Tabora, 12 December 2012).

3. PAASCU knows however that such “imperfections” may lead to irreparable
damage. Many hard won gains grown over the years can be lost to poor policy
powerfully enforced. It is disappointed that CHED, serving higher education, chose
not to continue discussion of the imperfect plan to further perfect it to the
satisfaction of all serious stakeholders, but instead chose to approve it with in its
admitted imperfection – and now mystifies it with an appeal to serendipity.
The proposed MoA that CHED sent PAASCU is on the mistaken presumption (in
legalese, on the mistaken WHEREAS) that PAASCU wishes to shift to “outcomes
based evaluation…” In Dr. Licuanan’s letter to me, she states that PAASCU had
informed her in a meeting of October 12 that PAASCU, along with all the
accrediting organizations, had informed CHED that it was “making the shift” to
outcomes-based accreditation. This is not true. At that meeting, I expressly
reiterated my request as PAASCU President that the approval of the program be
postponed. PAASCU has continued to assert that outcomes-based quality
assurance is untenable. Its objections have never been satisfactorily answered.
With the approval of CMO 46, s. 2012, CHED has closed its eyes to the
imperfections of outcomes-based quality assurance. After all, with the invisible
hand of Serendipity, all will turn out for the better, it “thinks.” Meanwhile, CHED
has approved a government regulatory program of outcomes- and typology based
quality assurance on higher education that seriously offends against academic
freedom.
For 55 years, PAASCU has served quality assurance through accreditation through
systems and instruments proven to be of educational value. The dedicated work of

4. the distinguished educators who make PAASCU effective has always been
voluntary. Were PAASCU convinced it needs to change its instruments of
evaluation to outcomes-based accreditation, it would do so voluntarily. Its
incentive would be the service of education in the Philippines. Not “Two Million
Pesos.”
CHED’s proposal is not a joke. Neither is it innocent. It wants everyone to tow the
line. Even if it is crooked.