During the CHED 2025 budget hearing in the Senate, EDCOM 2 Co-Chairperson Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, raised the issue of the alarming disparity in higher education participation rates between NCR and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), pointing out that while the NCR has a 72% participation rate, BARMM lags far behind.
“We need to understand why BARMM’s participation rate is only 3%, despite the availability of free higher education and other subsidy programs, like the TES and the Tulong Dunong program”.
Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Popoy De Vera responded that while CHED oversees state universities and colleges (SUCs) in BARMM, private universities in the region fall under the jurisdiction of the BARMM Ministry of Basic, Higher, and Technical Education, limiting CHED’s ability to enforce standards or directly intervene.
“While we are assisting BARMM in building its technical capacity for quality assurance, CHED has no legal basis to enforce our standards on private universities in BARMM,” De Vera clarified. Additionally, Chair De Vera also noted the challenges in obtaining data from private institutions.
Pointing out that SUCs in BARMM still fall under CHED, Senator Gatchalian said that these SUCs can be mobilized to encourage enrollment in higher education as these institutions still receive funding and subsidies through national programs. “At the end of the day, mga estudyante rin ng BARMM ang gusto nating paaralin. We want to encourage them to go to school,” said Gatchalian.
Senator Pia Cayetano also weighed in, pointing to Section 16 of the BARMM Law, which prioritizes an integrated system of quality education. She noted that this provision could allow for a more cohesive relationship between CHED and BARMM, enabling stronger collaboration in ensuring that students in BARMM have access to quality education.
“The whole section starts with: ‘It shall be a top priority of the Bangsamoro government to establish, maintain and support the complete and integrated system of quality education, which shall be a subsystem of the national education system.’ I don’t know how you interpret that, but this representation submits that supervision and regulation of education in BARMM is still part of that subsystem,” Senator Cayetano argued.
The BARMM law also indicates that “As far as practicable, the Bangsamoro Government shall be represented in the departments, offices, commissions, agencies and bureaus of the National Government that implement and enforce policies, programs, and projects of the National Government in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region,” under Section 11.
Chairperson De Vera further elaborated that there are ongoing efforts being made to strengthen BARMM’s capacity to manage and monitor its higher education institutions. He mentioned ongoing training and technical assistance to ensure that BARMM develops its own quality assurance systems, which would allow its programs to benefit from national subsidies like TES and Tulong Dunong.
“We have funded several projects that support higher education in the BARMM. But it always depends on what they ask for, which is part of their autonomy. But whatever the request, we respond as a commission, including giving grants to SUCs in the region,” De Vera said.
Senator Gatchalian also proposed EDCOM 2 to connect CHED with BARMM officials for further discussion on the issue. “We feel that from a national perspective, lahat dapat ng regions should benefit from free higher education and also from the subsidies that we are giving.”
