College years are being considered to be shortened by one semester by eliminating some General Education (GE) subjects, a move supported by the Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
DepEd proposes transferring 15 GE units to senior high school by renaming existing core subjects, while completely dropping nine other GE units from college.
This K-12 program improvement aims to reduce curriculum overlap and eliminate costly college bridging programs, shortening the path to graduation for senior high school graduates.
DepEd plans to rename five senior high school core subjects to match CHED’s General Education course titles, aligning them more closely with the college curriculum.
Job-ready future
Moving college GE subjects to senior high school allows students to graduate earlier and reduces educational costs for families and less time for students within institutions.
DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara says that trimming SHS core subjects gives students more time for hands-on training and work immersion, helping them become job-ready even without experience.
This way, they can be employed easily by government-owned or -controlled companies and organizations due to the abilities they possess learned from immersion and hands-on education.
Integrating GE subjects to SHS can help more students develop critical thinking, since SHS has more enrollees than college.
Time over quality?
Critics, like Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, worried that moving college subjects to high school could lead to shallow learning and result in underpaid workers.
“If we think about it, if we remove it, then at 16 years old, the students have already graduated and will then search for jobs…But since they are only 16, they would only get jobs that don’t pay well. I fear that because they have jobs already, maybe they won’t go to college anymore,” he said.
Gatchalian also stated that there are insufficient resources and SHS teachers may not yet be fully prepared to teach subjects originally designed for college, risking poor instruction quality.
There are concerns that removing subjects like Art Appreciation, Contemporary World, and Ethics might weaken students’ cultural, modern, and moral development.
