Foreign nationals looking to study, conduct research, or train at Philippine universities will soon deal with a single government platform rather than a patchwork of agencies, under a new directive from President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.
The president signed Executive Order No. 124, which sets up the Education Philippines (EduPhil) Program as the national effort to market the country as a top choice for international students pursuing higher education, research, and training.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) will run the program as its lead implementing agency. Under the order, CHED is tasked with pushing Philippine higher education abroad through academic partnerships, research collaboration, and knowledge exchange, while also easing the way international students enter and remain in the country.
Central to the plan is the EduPhil Portal, described in the order as a secure, interoperable digital system meant to act as one window for handling student documentation, institutional endorsements, referrals, and the various permits, clearances, certifications, and visas that foreign students need. The order specifies that nothing in it strips away the statutory powers of the agencies that will plug into the portal, and that all data handling must follow existing rules on privacy, cybersecurity, and interoperability.
To steer the effort, the order renames and reconstitutes the Inter-Agency Committee on Foreign Students—originally created under EO No. 285, series of 2000—as the EduPhil Task Force. CHED chairs the body, with the Department of Foreign Affairs serving as vice-chair. Members include the Bureau of Immigration, the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the Department of Tourism, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, and the Professional Regulation Commission. CHED will also act as the task force secretariat.
Among the task force’s assignments is drafting a five-year strategy for promoting international education, which the order frames as the government’s main vehicle for the program. The group is also directed to recommend fixes for visa processing, flag overlaps and gaps among agencies, and propose ways to have Philippine and foreign academic degrees and credentials mutually recognized. An annual progress report goes to the president through the CHED chairperson.
The order grounds the program in several existing laws, citing Republic Act No. 11448, or the Transnational Higher Education Act, which commits the state to expanding transnational higher education, and RA No. 7722, the Higher Education Act of 1994 that established CHED.
CHED has one year from the order’s issuance to assess how the program is working and, if the results warrant it, to recommend to the president that a dedicated office be created within the commission to sustain it. Separately, the task force has 120 days to issue the guidelines needed to put the order into effect.
