MANILA, Philippines?No more sleeping on the job.

Educator Patricia Licuanan Monday formally took over the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) and vowed to help ?reverse the deterioration of Philippine higher education.?

Licuanan took over from former CHEd chair Emmanuel Angeles during a simple turn-over ceremony at the main office in Quezon City Monday morning.

When President Aquino announced Licuanan?s appointment three weeks ago, he scored the CHEd for ?sleeping on the job,? for failing to crack down on schools whose graduates had failed to pass the board exams.

?There is so much that needs to be done. All of us have to make sure we are not sleeping on the job,? said Licuanan, the immediate past president of Miriam College.

?As chair of CHEd, I consider it my job (and here I paraphrase the words of Eleanor Roosevelt)?to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That is both a promise and a warning,? she said.

Licuanan said the CHEd under her watch would have the ?political will? to implement the much-needed reforms in the educational system and not just come out with another study on how to reform it.

The CHEd would also closely monitor and eventually close down schools that continue to produce graduates who fail the board exams.

?It would be easy to see if the schools have not really produced any passers?as the president said of some nursing schools?we have to do something about it,? Licuanan said.

Meanwhile, militant students warned that the ?education crisis? had worsened and urged Licuanan to address the ?unprecedented increase in tuition and other school fees in different higher education institutions, both public and private.?

Einstein Recedes, president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), said the national average tuition rate in the tertiary level has gone up by 94.7 percent, while in the National Capital Region tuition had risen by 123.07 percent since 2001.

?Under the Arroyo administration, CHEd allowed the yearly increase in tuition and other fees to the detriment of millions of Filipinos who cannot afford the high price of education,? Recedes said.

?Based on UNESCO?s study in 2008, 73 percent of the youth are forced to drop out due to the unattainable price of Philippine education,? he said.

Recedes said that according to the CHEd itself, 80 percent of high school graduates never make it to college and, according to the National Statistical Coordinating Board (NSCB), the average drop-out rate of college students was 83.34 percent in 1994-2004.

?We urge the CHEd to exercise its regulatory powers to stop school owners from raising tuition and other fees,? he said. ?We hope they?ll be able to do their jobs, something which the previous head of CHEd was not able to do.?

Licuanan said that while students should realize that ?quality education doesn?t come cheap,? the CHEd would try to find ?creative and realistic ways? to keep tuition from shooting through the roof.