BOHOL of Rep. Kristine Alexie Besas Tutor stressed the need for colleges and universities to focus on producing more graduates with multilingual mastery, particularly in European and Asian languages, to offset the waning edge in English.

The solon said the country should have more degree programs and short courses in Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese language variants, and European languages.

She said that this would be in addition to addressing shortcomings faced by senior high school graduates in English.

“While our basic education sector is in a learning crisis, the leading higher education institutions are not because of our growing middle-class population. This is where our comparative strengths in human resources are,” Tutor said.

Tutor further explained that multilingual mastery would offer new horizons for Filipino graduates aiming for jobs and business ventures in the business process outsourcing sector and for overseas migration.

She also emphasized the need to invest in tertiary student subsidies to make college education more accessible.

“Investments of the government in higher education through the Tertiary Education Subsidy and UniFAST or Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education are working and should be ramped up in the coming years because college education is opening up more opportunities for young Filipinos and professionals,” she said.

The Commission on Higher Education earlier said it would work more closely with the Department of Education to improve the performance of Filipino learners in international large-scale assessments.

The CHED also vowed to engage Centers of Development and Centers of Excellence in Teacher Education to study further the details of the country report to frame comprehensive solutions for consideration of the DepEd.