CHED eyes enhancing ROTC program with add'l courses  

The Commission on Higher Education is seeking to improve the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) — which President Rodrigo Duterte wants to be made mandatory again — by introducing associate programs, an official said Thursday.

"We are looking at associate programs in, for example, [Department of] National Defense [DND], security management and military science that would later on, even progress to the bachelor’s degrees and even masteral degrees," said CHED executive director Julito Vitriolo at a press briefing in Malacañang.

"In the last CAS meeting or the Cabinet Assistance System meeting, there was a presentation on this and the Cabinet Assistance Meeting headed by [Cabinet] Secretary [Leoncio] Evasco [Jr.] even suggested that we should go beyond an associate degree and go for the higher level degrees," he added.

A law enacted in 2002, Republic Act 9163 or the National Service Training Program (NSTP) Act makes the ROTC "optional and voluntary." Under it, ROTC is just one of three NSTP components, the two others being the Literacy Training Services and the Civil Welfare Training Service.

However, in a meeting in August, Duterte's Cabinet discussed, among others, drafting a legislative proposal that would amend RA 9163.

Vitriolo said the essence of the improved ROTC program is to instill patriotism and discipline among the youth, in response to Duterte's call to make the program mandatory again for college students.

"Basically that’s the essence," Vitriolo said.

"We are following two tracks here, the one track is the passage of a law that will make it mandatory and this is--the efforts here is being led by the Department of National Defense. Now, in the academic side, CHED is leading also the efforts in enhancing it so that the ROTC program package with other courses will now, you know, give you an additional competencies in terms of having an additional or dual degree or associate degree," he added.

He pointed out that the Philippine Military Academy "can only actually supply about 20 percent of our officers in the Armed Forces."

"So with this kind of possibility and we can have more choices, so to speak, for officers," Vitriolo added. —KBK, GMA News