Academic terminologies

HERE are some terminologies about academic institutions -- their structural divisions, their constituents and how they are classified, ranked and tenured, types of learning institutions, etc -- which we may come across in writing or in conversations as we go onward into the 21st century of a rapidly globalizing environment and much more so, once APEC has really set in our academic lives. How are such divisions, constituents, etc referred to in universities in other continents and which usage has become part of the language of our Asean neighbors drawn from their respective national histories?

Once I asked the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chair, whether a ”community college” could be allowed to offer graduate courses.The CHED created in 1994, was barely several years old then. Except for the Pamantasan ng Maynila chartered in 1995, there were hardly any LGU post-secondary schools in the country. This practice became popular in the later 90’s after the Local Government Code (RA 7160) was passed into law in 1991. What is a school, an institute, an academy a college, a university, I asked? What we had in the CHED agenda then was to distinguish these educational entities from each other similar to what each is in other parts of the globe. With CHED’s typology-based quality assurance -- there are telling signs that this now is coming to pass.