Bohol 3rd district Rep. Kristine Alexis Tutor (PPAB)

To combat the so-called “diploma mills”, Bohol 3rd district Rep. Kristine Alexis Tutor is calling on the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to conduct a data analysis to trace the alma mater of those who fail the professional level of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) exam.

Tutor, chairperson of the House Committee on Civil Service and Professional Regulation, said that CHEd must be alarmed as to how and why college graduates “fail to hurdle the very basic CSC exam”.

“This is most probably a chronic symptom of the low standards of diploma mills in both urban and rural areas,” she said in a statement.

Labeled as “diploma mills”, these are educational institutions that offer substandard programs that often lead to subpar performances in civil service and licensure examinations.

“These diploma mills are opportunistic parasites feeding off hapless students and parents,” Tutor underscored.

The lady lawmaker said that once a student enters higher education, it becomes the responsibility of the colleges and universities to make up for or compensate for the inadequacies of basic education.

“I believe the bare minimum measure of the quality of college graduates is that they pass the Civil Service exams,” she added.

Tutor pointed out the high failure rate of five out of six examinees in the latest CSC exams was a consequence of the unmonitored prevalence of “diploma mills” in the country.

According to data provided by Tutor, 83 percent of the examinees for both the professional (college graduates) and non-professional level (non-college graduates) failed the exams.

“That’s just too high a failure rate, which confirms how all their learning before taking the exam—both academic and experiential—was far from adequate to meet the very basic competencies the exams were designed to measure,” she noted.

Majority of those who failed were found to have difficulty with the items on Math, English grammar, and abstract reasoning, she said.

“If they are in contractual, job order, casual, or volunteer positions, they will likely remain in those situations, look for jobs outside of government, or be entrepreneurs,” she added.

Amid the “alarming” result, the Bohol representative is batting for compassion. She says the government should prepare positive paths such as review classes, tutorials, and livelihood training.

With this, those who failed the exams will have options available to them, particularly on whether they will take the CSC exams again.

Meanwhile, Tutor congratulated the roughly 17 percent, or one out of six examinees, who passed the exams.

“They have just attained the most important item among the qualification standards for regularization in government service,” the congresswoman said.

She is expecting that in the coming weeks, all those in the 17 percent will fully qualify for the vacant positions in the government agencies’ respective plantilla.