MANILA, Philippines -- The chairman of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has congratulated the four Philippine universities who made it to The Times Higher Education- Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2008, but said he would like to see the University of the Philippines rank higher next year.

And he plans to have the state university achieve this with a bigger budget.

CHED chairman Emmanuel Angeles commended Ateneo de Manila University, the University of the Philippines, De La Salle University (DLSU), and the University of Sto. Tomas (UST) for their strong showing in the annual list.

“I wish to congratulate all four universities who made it. I commend them for their achievement,” he said in a telephone interview.

Angeles, who is also chairman of the UP Board of Regents, said he would like to see UP doing better in the rankings in 2009 and that a bigger budget might help its performance. “We are going to appeal to Congress to give UP a higher budget,” he said.

The state-subsidized UP’s one-semester tuition for a paying student is P36,000. It has campuses and extension sites in major cities and provinces in the country, providing universal tertiary education to students from middle-income to low-income groups.

According to the survey released this week, Ateneo ranked 254th, leaping from its 400-500 slot and representing the highest ranking by any Philippine university in the list. Ateneo was sandwiched between London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.

UP, the country’s premier state university was placed at 274, up from its 398th place last year. UP was between two German universities, the University of Hamburg and Ulm University and was outranked by Ateneo for the first time in years.

DLSU and UST, both private Catholic universities like Ateneo, were ranked at 415th and 470th, respectively. In the past year, the two schools were out of the Top 500.

Some UP officials had been questioning the validity of the survey even when it was ranking higher than other Philippine universities.

UP president Emerlinda Roman earlier said the data gathering process for the survey was not fully explained to the universities being assessed.