Philippine Private Higher Education and Public Policy

Until the 1990s, the Philippines relied, to an incredible degree, on private colleges and universities to meet the country’s higher education (HE) needs. Then came a public policy change that featured the development of a massive public higher education sector alongside an already massive private higher education (PHE) sector. Beyond this shift of sectoral balance, public policy affected PHE by changing the rules made for it and by changing policies on public HE. This chapter argues that while a mix of models has characterized policymaking on Philippine PHE after World War II, there have been even more discernible changes in the mix since the 1990s. At first glance, the state’s legislative and executive actions over these recent decades might well suggest a more significant shift to a state-steering public policy model, and indeed, we identify additional characteristics of such shifting to those in the pre-1990s. However, the American legacy of liberal market orientation—coupled with the intricacies of Philippine policymaking, influenced by political pressures and relentless negotiations between the state and PHE providers—adds further dimensions that leave the pluralist-market model as more apt to characterize policymaking despite these characteristics.