The research program of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) began during my term as chairman in 1992-1995.
At that time, there was not much money for research at the Higher Education Development Fund (HEDF). However, we were able to set aside a small amount to support the research activities of three higher education institutions dealing with biodiversity studies.
In the 2000s, much larger amounts became available for research by universities in the three main regions of the Philippines (Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao). Funds were allocated by CHED to support programs of the regional Zonal Research Centers (ZRCs), which were conceptualized and first established in 2000 by Dr. Ester Garcia and Dr. Roberto Padua, chair and commissioner, respectively, at that time.
The concept of ZRC was implemented by succeeding Chairs of CHED until 2010 during the chairmanship of Dr. Emmanuel Angeles.
Incidentally, I had the privilege of serving as presiding chair of the group of regional ZRC directors during Dr. Angeles’ term at CHED. He doubled the appropriation of each ZRC to P10 million on my request. But it turned out that some ZRCs had difficulty spending this amount of money.
During the 10 years of existence of the ZRCs, CHED commissioned a number of management experts to evaluate the results of the operations of the ZRCs.
One of the recommendations was to adopt the concept of Philippine Higher Education Research Network (PHERNET). It was assumed that the ZRCs had, in the past 10 years, successfully built the research capability of some higher education institutions (such as those in Bacolod, Negros Occidental), and were now ready to assist other academic institutions come up to the international level of research capability and at the same time to enlarge the networks of Philippine higher institutions beyond the nine or 10 universities that were then contributing to the advancement of knowledge, as well as research institutions abroad.
The indicators for this international level of research competence were the number of publications, quality of publications, and citation indices as measured by the databases compiled by ISI and Scopus.
One of the research areas where the Philippines can be considered at par with other advanced countries is biodiversity. The progress made in this field during the past five or six years of the research program of CHED has been due to the leadership of the Office of Planning, Research & Information led by Dr. Jean Tayag.
Much of the success in biodiversity research and information dissemination is due to her continuous and consistent efforts to focus on biodiversity. She organized an international conference on biodiversity in early 2011, and has enlarged the number of institutions involved in biodiversity investigations. She has been instrumental in raising the quality of publications by insisting that only papers published in properly refereed Philippine journals recognized by ISI and Scopus. She has caused the improvement of the quality of journals published by Philippine universities through the process of accreditation. She has implemented a rigorous process of screening papers for presentation at international meetings and has encouraged deserving faculty members to travel abroad to participate in conferences by recommending travel grants for them.
In summary, CHED had, to a certain extent, improved the research performance of some universities and colleges during the past five or six years. Dr. Jean Tayag has played an important role in elevating the quality of academic research in the country and should be recognized for her excellent work at CHED.
