Origin, role and function of student affairs services

WHAT seems to have been officially written or said about the student affairs, student support, or student services in our higher education institutions (HEI’s)in between 2006 until 2013 are the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) guidelines to HEI’s on the role and functions of Student Affairs and Services (SAS),labeled sometimes as Student Personnel Services.SAS is a department/division in an HEI to complement and support the formation of students according to the institutional vision and mission by enhancing growth and development in terms of human attributes --- the spiritual, rational, affective and physical. If the head is a dean/director, he/she reports to the vice-president for academics. If as a vice-president, this head reports to the HEI President.

Until the 70’s, a dean of men/women or of discipline, distinguished from the college dean headed the SAS. I remember at Xavier University - the Ateneo de Cagayan, we had a Dean of Discipline.As in many Philippine universities, this Dean might have had a similarposition description of US universities, one who “undertakes to assist the men (and women) students [to] achieve the utmost of which they are individually capable, through personal effort on their behalf, and through mobilizing in their behalf all the forces within the University which can be made to serve this end.” The one thing that remained consistently today “was the responsibility to deal with men and help them develop to their potential.”Formore,cf.At that time, too, a number of colleges were either only for men or for women, becoming co-educational in later years.