The State and higher education

By Fr. Ranhilio Aquino. The Constitution of the Republic does not provide for State control of higher education.  In fact, control in even its most benign form would be antithetical to a clear constitutional grant of academic freedom the parameters of which are, by now, well established in jurisprudence, both local and foreign.  With good reason then does Fr. Joel Tabora, SJ advance the argument that the law purposely designed the Commission on Higher Education to be a “weak agency” so that there would be no derogation at all of the academic freedom that guarantees the flourishing of universities and colleges in their role of being centers of higher education as well as of research.  In fact the community of scholars and professors that a university is should be as independent as possible for such is the demand of scholarship and of academic pursuits. Read more...