IN DEFENSE OF GENERAL EDUCATION

From the vantage of history’s long arc, any attempt to amputate the soul of our colleges by slashing General Education is both reckless and myopic. Today, GE courses comprise roughly 30 percent of a standard 120-unit bachelor’s degree in Philippine universities, which is an investment not in padding, but in the very scaffolding of critical minds. To recast these courses as dead weight and shove them into Senior High merely so students can sprint faster into unstable labor markets is to mistake speed for direction. We should not allow our future generations to emerge with diplomas yet remain hollow of context, conscience, and curiosity. DepEd and CHEd should know better!

The heralded PIDS finding that our programs are “too GE-heavy and internship-light” hides a deeper fallacy: that we must choose between thinking and doing. In reality, just 23 percent of graduates nationwide complete meaningful internships, and only 1.2 internships per 1,000 students contrast starkly with the five-per-1,000 benchmark in OECD nations. Internships alone can never replace a bedrock of philosophical inquiry, ethical reasoning, and civic literacy. If anything, bolstering GE ensures internships extend beyond rote labor into arenas where young Filipinos ask why power concentrates, how economies falter, and what role they must play in remedying both.

Consider the stark irony: our college graduate unemployment rate sits at 8.5 percent, which is higher than the national average of 6 percent, and underemployment haunts 17.6 percent of degree-holders. We are told to douse the very flame that could illuminate pathways to innovation, to relegate history, literature, and philosophy to an afterthought, all while graduates jostle for scarce jobs. This is no reform but an abdication of responsibility. A curriculum pruned of robust GE is a curriculum that abdicates the formation of adaptable, critical citizens.

The Philippines’ performance on the 2018 PISA assessments underscores the urgency of a GE renaissance: over 70 percent of our 15-year-olds failed to reach even baseline proficiency in reading, mathematics, or science. These findings cry out for richer, more context-driven GE offerings—courses that teach students not only formulas and dates, but how to read media critically, interrogate data properly, and decipher claims cloaked in spin. To reduce GE means surrendering our youth to a world of half-understood facts and whole-hearted confusion.

What drives this push for a leaner GE? A blind faith in the market as the supreme arbiter of value. Yet 45 percent of Philippine employers lament that graduates lack basic critical-thinking skills, and 62 percent report that new hires struggle with written communication. If the market truly ruled, it would demand more GE, not less. Stronger ethics modules, rigorous logic classes, and courses in civic engagement would yield employees who innovate, question waste and corruption, and lead projects with moral clarity.

Beyond market metrics lie structural failures: overcrowded classrooms averaging 50 students per section versus an OECD average of 26; per-pupil spending that ranks the Philippines among the bottom 10 in Southeast Asia; and a pedagogy still trapped in rote recitation rather than project-based learning. Trimming GE without addressing these foundational ills is akin to polishing a rusted hull while ignoring the gaping holes below the waterline. We refuse to let cosmetic cuts masquerade as real solutions.

Instead of excising GE, we must amplify it. Envision a curriculum where 20 units delve into Philippine history and society, 12 units grapple with ethics and philosophy, and nine units hone media literacy and communication. A robust GE core like this would comprise only 34 percent of total units, yet its ripple effects would echo through every discipline—engineering students crafting solutions with social empathy; business majors weighing profit alongside public good.

In an age of rampant disinformation, only 12 percent of college graduates can reliably identify the key provisions of the 1987 Constitution and trace their implications for contemporary governance. This deficit imperils our democracy. A strengthened GE can reverse this trend, embedding constitutional literacy, statistical reasoning, and digital ethics at every turn—arming graduates not just to navigate, but to safeguard, our fragile civic order.

The return on investing in GE is indisputable. UNESCO estimates that every additional year of tertiary education boosts a nation’s productivity growth by up to 2 percent annually—and a well-rounded GE amplifies that effect by fostering innovation and social cohesion. If we allocate even 0.5 percent more of GDP to elevating GE quality—with smaller classes, better-trained humanities faculty, and integrated community projects—the dividends will manifest in stronger institutions, a more informed electorate, and a workforce that solves problems rather than perpetuates them.

From our omniscient seat, we witness two paths: one that expedites graduates into precarious work, unmoored from history and ethics; another that forges thinkers capable of reimagining our nation. We choose the latter. We call on policymakers, educators, and communities to rally behind a General Education that resists reduction, that enriches rather than erodes, and that cements the Filipino intellect as a sharp instrument of progress.

The future demands no less.

IN DEFENSE OF GENERAL EDUCATION