The new faculty merit promotion guidelines approved March 27 by the Board of Regents (BOR) would deny promotion for more than 1,000 faculty members who would have otherwise been promoted this June based on previous rules. 

As the current rules stand, only 322 faculty members with doctorates will be able to cross into associate and full professor ranks—a low number, especially since the last promotion cycle was in 2021, which should have given time for faculty to meet publication quotas and other requirements, Faculty Regent Early Sol Gadong told the Collegian.

Many faculty members now stand to lose that promotion as the new guidelines have significantly increased the required number of publications. Newer faculty are particularly hit by the minimum requirement of three years of service to be eligible for promotion.

“Itong faculty merit promotion instrument ay natratrato bilang carrot na dina-dangle sa harap ng mga faculty members para magkayod-kabayo para ma-reach ang minimum number of publications, to get a PhD, etc., so that the university will also score higher or rank higher in the world rankings,” Gadong said.

New Guidelines

The four ranks of UP faculty—instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor—are promoted in cycles based on guidelines determined by the administration and approved by the BOR. They could be promoted within their rank, from instructor 1–7, assistant professor 1–7, and so on, or cross-rank into the next position.

Units and colleges submit to the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs (OVPAA) their list of faculty members recommended for promotion. Recommendations are based on a point system for faculty output in four categories: teaching, public service, professional development, and research.

To be promoted before, assistant professors were required to have three publications, while associate professors were required to have five throughout their entire career. At least one of those publications must have been published after the last promotion cycle.

But only that reckoning period is now considered under the revised guidelines. This means faculty members would have had to publish three to five publications within the last three years, depending on their rank, to be promoted this coming cycle.

There are 1,017 faculty members in the assistant professor 5–7 ranks, while 416 are associate professors 5–7, per the OVPAA. Most of these professors have published at least one publication since 2021, but that now falls short of the new publication quota, said Gadong.

“Crucial yung number na ito kasi ito yung mga apektado ng publication requirements. … Marami na rin kasing nagsasabi, or nagbanggit, nag-message na rin sa mga academic unions—nakakausap ko na rin— na they didn’t even apply for promotion anymore,” Gadong said.

No Consultation

Other faculty groups, such as CONTEND-UP and the All UP Academic Employees Union have decried the lack of consultation in the guidelines’ revision. Consultations by the administration were limited only to technical working groups, vice presidents, and chancellors of constituent units, instead of faculty members, they said.

“Anong datos ang ginamit ng OVPAA para makalikha ng ganitong guidelines? Hindi ba’t mahalaga ang konsultasyon hanggang sa lebel ng departamento sapagkat sa kanila magmumula ang mahahalagang tala tungkol sa kanilang kaguruan?” the academic union said in a statement.

Some proposals were even railroaded during the BOR meeting itself. The board’s March 27 meeting minutes showed that the minimum three-year service requirement, which would bar newer faculty from promotion, was added last minute in version 10 of the proposal. 

But during the BOR’s previous Feb. 27 meeting, the requirement was missing from version 8 of the proposal. The proposal was brought up again in March, supposedly due to a clerical error by the OVPAA.

The new requirement was defended by no less than UP President Angelo Jimenez, responding to opposition from the faculty regent that “three years is a reasonable period to demonstrate commitment.” 

Earlier, when then BOR Chairperson Prospero de Vera asked if the clerical error was because of opposition to the guidelines, Jimenez claimed that there was none, and that the issue was identified through “internal quality checks.”

“Once again—and this seems to have become an alarming habit of UP System officials under the leadership of UP President Angelo Jimenez—this document was formulated and cascaded without first ensuring a thorough and participatory consultation process involving faculty members at various levels, across all of UP’s constituent units,” CONTEND-UP said in a statement.

Need for Rankings

The BOR is set to deliberate on the list of faculty to be promoted next Thursday. The final list will be released on June 30 and is set to cost the university P496 million, according to Vice President for Administration Augustus Resurreccion in the Feb. 27 BOR meeting.

But the promotions will be effective starting June 30, instead of the usual practice of Jan. 1, meaning promoted faculty will miss out on six months of benefits associated with their promotion.

The retroactive effectivity of merit promotions, which was the case for previous promotion cycles, was scrapped after opposition from De Vera. He cited that a two-year cycle might “create an expectation for regular promotions,” and that scrapping the retroactive benefits would align the university with other state universities.

Aligning with other universities was also one of the reasons cited for the increase in publication quota, said Gadong. “But I believe that at the heart of it all, the requirement of a PhD for example, for crossing ranks, and of publications for crossing ranks, all boils down to university rankings.”

Most world ranking systems heavily weigh publication output in their grading. Most recently, UP Manila and Diliman were placed in the 2025 Global Top 2000 list of the Center for World University Rankings, the only Philippine institutions there. But the administration has long been criticized for chasing these rankings at the expense of community welfare and national development.

“The establishment of metrics for promotion is not just a mechanical means of forcing faculty members to abide by the arbitrary and politicized priorities of a particular administration. It is the recognition and fair compensation for years of labor and sacrifice on the part of UP faculty members,” CONTEND-UP said in a statement.

The BOR has indicated that they will revise the guidelines for the next cycle of promotions, assumedly next year. The faculty regent called for a reversal of the revised guidelines on publications and minimum years of service, among others.

“Dapat after nitong round na ito, back to the drawing board dapat ang administration, take a look at the [faculty merit promotion] guidelines para mas angkop sa konteksto ng mga faculty yung magiging guidelines,” Gadong said. ●