THE UNIVERSITY of the East on Sunday rejected students’ appeal to postpone the opening of classes for Academic Year 2021-2022.

UE President Ester Garcia said that delaying the opening of the school year will cause irregularities in the Commission on Higher Education’s mandate to have 17 class hours per unit in a semester.

“The CHED requires at least 17 hours of class per unit. With your earlier request that a rest day be given after the exams, we cannot reduce the hours anymore,” Garcia said.

“If we move the opening of classes, we would have to extend the class days to the Christmas season or to January. Besides, classes will be purely online, including those in Dentistry,” she added.

Garcia pointed out that faculty members will be greatly affected if classes will be moved to a later a date.

“Moving the start of classes would entail more hardship for the faculty, especially those who did not have summer loads. Their last pay was received in May,” she said.

On July 31, student groups sent a letter to Garcia asking that class opening be moved from August 9 to August 23 because of the reimposition of Enhanced Community Quarantine in Metro Manila.

The groups said that delaying class opening will provide learners and their families  “adequate and reasonable time to deal with the health and financial crisis caused by the pandemic.”