Solid North Party-list Rep. Ching Bernos has supported the recommendation of the Second Congressional Commission on Education to invest in the Commission on Higher Education’s capacity, citing serious staffing and monitoring gaps.

“It is a well-established fact that the Commission on Higher Education is stretched to its limits. Kulang na kulang sa staff kaya kinakapos sila gaano man nila gustong gampanan ang kanilang mandato,” Bernos, a member of the House committee on higher and technical education, said.

In its final report titled Turning Point: A Decade of Necessary Reform (2026–2035), EDCOM 2 cited extreme deficiencies in CHED’s regional monitoring capacity.

The report noted that CHED has only 398 plantilla personnel overseeing 37,443 undergraduate and graduate programs across 1,980 colleges and universities serving 3.8 million students. In some regions, a single staff member is tasked with monitoring more than 200 programs.

EDCOM 2 also found that CHED was able to review only 13 percent of programs scheduled for monitoring, with 84 percent of those reviewed showing deficiencies ranging from inadequate facilities to weak faculty qualifications.

CHED further reported that it takes an average of 11 years to update standards for college degree programs.

Bernos said CHED must be “radically improved if we are to address the various gaps that yield an inferior quality of tertiary education.”

“Kung gusto natin na mas gumaling ang ating mga pamantasan at kolehiyo, kinakailangang mabigyan ng sapat na tao at pondo ang CHED para gawin ang mandato nitong pangasiwaan ang kalidad ng edukasyon na inaalok ng ating mga institusyon,” he added.

He said that while a proposal to update CHED’s charter through the Higher Education Development and Innovation Act is pending, parallel efforts should be undertaken to strengthen the commission’s resources and institutional capacity.

“The future of our children is at stake here. Our continued failure to make CHED capable of upholding its mandate to ensure quality education in our institutions could mean that even though students graduate what they will be holding is a mere piece of paper, minus the knowledge required to be productive citizens.”