Letter to the CHED Central Office

The following letter has been sent to us through email from a group of students of AMA Makati.
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11 August 2008


The Director
Office of Programs and Standards
CHED Central Office
Pasig City


Sir/Madam:

We are currently enrolled students on different degree programs of AMA Computer College - Makati Campus located at 5486 Pres. Sergio Osmena Highway, Cor. Gen. Tinio St., Bangkal, Makati City.

We just want to raise some issues here regarding our course offerings as to whether or not our respective programs are recognized by the CHED.

First, some of us are BSA students and yet we don’t have a CPA instructor, not even one. We have accounting courses but the one who is handling these is not a CPA but a management graduate. He does not have any master’s degree in the related field. And three weeks have passed already, we still don’t have a teacher substitute for our former teacher because he was terminated from his job. For many years, there is no passer of the CPA Board Exam here at AMA Makati. Currently, we only have two teachers who teach in the College of Business Administration and Accountancy. We wonder why the school is operating BSBA and BSA programs in spite of the lack of qualified and competent teachers in the college and with only two teachers.

Second, the school is currently operating Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication. But the reality is this: There is only one instructor for the entire trimester and on the previous trimesters and she doesn’t have any master’s degree in the field; they don’t have equipments such as camera, videocam, etc; for every subject, they only meet once a week although subjects are equivalent to 3 units; the students do not learned much because of this; no activities are being conducted for the enhancement of MASSCOM students, etc.

Third, instructors here are teaching subjects which are not their areas of specialization. We always complain for our teachers who do not know what they are talking about in class. We have instructors who are management graduate and yet they are teaching Turbo C, Foreign Language, Java Programming, computer fundamentals.

Fourth, AMA Makati has a graduate school – but only in name. No classes are being conducted. We pay thousands of pesos for every trimester but to our dismay, no classes are being held. And after the trimester, we received our grades. And that’s all. We do not learn. We just meet our instructors once or twice in a trimester just for the sake of introducing each other’s name. One student asked for a legal advice from her lawyer. The lawyer sent a demand letter to the school asking for the reimbursement of the tuition fees because it was already in the middle of the tri and still there was no classes. This is a perennial problem here. Ask the MSCS graduates of AMA Makati and they will affirm this claim of ours.

Fifth issue is about the NSTP. From what we know, we should meet three (3) hours a week but the reality is, we only meet 1.5 hours per week.

Sixth, the classroom size is beyond what is required. There are classes that have 80 students on it; 70 students; 50 students. In our class, we have 70 students. Examples of these classes are first year students’ classes. During our computer laboratory hours, two or three students share one computer. They told us before that there is one PC for every one student, but it didn’t come into reality.

Seventh, many of our teachers are teaching different subjects beyond what is required. My mother, who is a college professor, told me that a teacher should only have 3 preparations, and at most is only 4, in all cases. But our teachers here have 10 preparations; some have 6, 7, 8, and 9. They always have overload of subjects like 37 hours a week because there is no available teacher. The effect is that they find it difficult to teach us the necessary things. We failed to maximize the learning.

And lastly, the first trimester will end on August 23, 2008 and yet, we still don’t have teachers in several subjects and evening classes such as Trigonometry and many others.

We humbly ask the Office of Programs and Standards to conduct an investigation in AMA Makati as soon as possible to check all these things. We are the ones who are first being affected. We choose to remain anonymous in this letter because we are afraid that the administration will find fault on us.

Thank you so much.


Sincerely yours,


CONCERNED STUDENTS OF AMA MAKATI