THE COMMISSION on Higher Education found as worrisome the call of more than a hundred faculty members of the University of the Philippines to end the semester, saying the university cannot give up despite the challenges brought by the new educational setup.

CHED Chairman Prospero de Vera III said that if other schools can continue with distance learning, so can the premiere university.

“If other universities can do it, it’s going to be ironic that the premiere university of the country will surrender and suddenly say we cannot continue learning. A lot of the schools are able to do it this semester,” he said.

Recently, UP faculty members filed a petition to end the semester, citing the heavy workload and mental burden on students and teachers.

“With only three weeks left to finish the semester, discounting the time needed to recover by those affected by the recent typhoons, the pressure to finish the remaining days of the semester has exacerbated to the point of inhumanity,” the faculty said in the petition letter.

De Vera said that UP can only end the semester if there is no longer a way to continue education.

“To end the school year, no. Because you end the semester if you cannot do anything anymore to continue the learning of students but that is not true because you can extend the semester. There is no reason to unilaterally suspend the whole learning process,” he said.

“There are many ways to continue learning if there are problems with online connections, you can do asynchronous learning,  you can do it by modules,” De Vera added.

“You know this idea that you have to stop everything is not based on empirical evidence because there are schools that have gone online or doing flexible learning,” he said.