Graduates attend the commencement ceremony in this photo taken on Aug. 1, 2024. — PHILIPPINE STAR/EDD GUMBAN

THE Commission on Higher Education (CHED) on Wednesday said it is working to produce flexible and versatile Filipino graduates equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) literacy.

“In ASEAN alone, studies show that by 2030, more than half of existing jobs will require advanced digital skills,” CHED Commissioner Ethel Agnes P. Valenzuela said at CanvasCon 2025.

“Yet many higher education systems are still designed around yesterday’s workforce, not tomorrow’s,” she added.

Ms. Valenzuela noted that there are 5 million higher education students in the Philippines, but only 800,000 are in ICT-related courses. “So we really lack a supply of AI workforce.”

As stated in the AI Workforce Development Plan, government agencies, including CHED, aim to generate one million AI general workforce to strengthen the country’s competitiveness in the global AI economy, with 10,000 AI developers, 3,000 AI engineers, and 2,000 AI experts targeted by 2028.

“We need a lot of manpower to help us in this AI era,” Ms. Valenzuela said. “The private sectors, universities will also help out all government agencies and the general public.”

“We can focus on foundational skills, right, and conceptual skills, but heavy AI literacy is also something very important,” she added.

CHED has recently established AI deliverables, which consist of seven objectives, including AI upskilling and reskilling through “Lifelong Learning,” capacitating higher education institutions (HEIs) on AI through curriculum integration and AI pedagogy for human capital development, and harmonizing research, innovation, and community extension on AI.

According to Instructure, a US-based education technology company, the Philippines is at the forefront of guidance from most Asian countries.

“Across the globe, the Philippines is in a great position,” Ryan Lufkin, vice-president of Global Academic Strategy at Instructure, told reporters in an interview.

“The leadership of the country is really focused on the non-incremental learning experiences, credentials, upscaling and reskilling programs, AI literacy, and adoption of AI,” he added.

In the 2025 State of Higher Education report by Instructure, it was revealed that 63% of Filipino students use generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT to generate texts, while 58% use it for translation tasks.

Some 55% of students also seek assistance from AI-powered platforms to explain difficult concepts, while 52% rely on these to summarize academic articles.

Meanwhile, 71% of teachers in the country also create learning materials using AI, and 65% use the technology to generate quiz questions and assignments.

Around 56% of educators also use AI to create personalized or adaptive learning materials for students, while others use it for seminar or tutorial plans (37%) and for marking transcripts (31%).

“That’s why I think the Philippines, I would put them in the top 20% globally,” Mr. Lufkin said. “Just because of the mindset and the focus on these tools and the understanding that these are going to be necessary for the workforce in the future.” — Almira Louise S. Martinez

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