QS HIGHER EDUCATION AMERICAS

Title of Paper: Redefining Higher Education in the Philippines during the Pandemic: Case Study of Cebu Doctors’ University, Cebu, Philippines CELO+ Higher education has always been challenging in the Philippines. The country wants to uphold international standards while realizing the local circumstances it is in. Filipino graduates are globally-competitive, finding employment in hospitals, industrial parks, international hotel chains and the like. The pandemic definitely brought significant changes to our higher education institutions. But some universities here like Silliman University in Dumaguete City, in the middle part of the Philippines; College of Saint Benilde, Metro Manila (an affiliate of De La Salle University, run by La Salle Brothers) and Mapua University have long established their online learning platforms so the pandemic was not so difficult a transition for them. Case Study: Cebu Doctors’ University, Cebu, Philippines, https://cebudoctorsuniversity.edu/ Cebu Doctors’ University is a premier medical institution in the Visayas region of the Philippines. It is known to produce board topnotchers in Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy etc. But CDU is also offering non-traditional, nonmedical programs like BS Computer Science, AB English with TEFL and AB International Studies. The writer teaches Economics courses in its AB International Studies program, which has tracks in Asian, American and European Studies. During the pandemic, our students who were scattered all over the world were able to continue studying when the University bought the Brightspace learning program and branded it to CELO +, www.brightspace.com/d2lhome. We have been using this online learning platform since June 2020 and the administration would like to exploit its use as much as possible. The writer have had students who joined the online classes from as far as South Africa, Dubai, Texas and California in the USA aside from the many other parts of Visayas and Mindanao in the Philippines where they were all situated and came from. These students abroad had to adjust to the timings in the Philippines for their online classes. Some of them may be on their way to Cebu, Philippines as we speak because the University plans to have some in person classes when the new school year starts in August. It’s not only the students who had to adjust but the faculty members too. They had to learn to navigate the online learning platform to hold classes, administer tests, receive homeworks etc., at the same time contend with our infamous internet signals in the country. It’s been a very interesting journey, to say the least. So in conclusion, higher education in the Philippines has a very promising future. If only these higher education institutions would be resilient enough to adjust to the change, for sure our universities and the graduates that they produce would have a long way to go, in life and in their careers.