The true value of a diploma
The recent warning of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) against diploma mills exposes a profound systemic failure rooted in the extreme competition of our capitalist society. This environment, which prizes economic advancement above all, pushes educators toward unethical shortcuts. Teachers, drowning in workloads, are compelled by promotion and salary schemes to seek graduate degrees. Yet, legitimate programs are often inaccessible, forcing them toward “quickie” degrees that trade payment for a hollow diploma.
Most graduate degrees obtained are in education and public administration—fields that do little to deepen the subject mastery our classrooms desperately need, a gap starkly revealed by our Programme for International Student Assessment results. The system creates a perverse incentive: the credential itself becomes the goal, not the learning. This pressure is compounded by policies requiring master’s units for entry-level public school teaching, a hurdle many cannot afford, and exacerbated by the marketplace of “academic writing services” offering to ghostwrite theses for a fee.
In a system that relentlessly incentivizes getting ahead, teachers are cornered into pursuing credentials—by any means—to secure the economic security they are otherwise denied.
The solution is not to blame teachers but to reform the structures that fail them. We must replace the demand for mere diplomas with accessible support for true professional development in public schools and state universities and colleges. Our nation’s educational quality hinges on the quality of teachers. We must invest in their real growth, not in the paper that falsely promises it.
Hezekiah Zaraspe,
hrzaraspe@ust.edu.ph
