Four programs of UP Diliman (UPD) have been certified by the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) University Network Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) this April.

These are the BA (political science) of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, the BS (hotel, restaurant, and institution management) and MS (food science) of the College of Home Economics (CHE), and BS (tourism) of the Asian Institute of Tourism (AIT).

According to the UPD Quality Assurance Office (QAO), these programs bear the same quality as the best programs of their kind in the ASEAN region. The AUN-QA certification is valid for five years.

The QAO is the unit that guides, promotes, and implements quality assurance policies in UPD’s academic and administrative units.

According to the AUN website, the AUN-QA is one of 17 thematic networks under the AUN. These thematic networks “act as specialized areas of academic cooperation that are deemed significant enough for a new secretariat to be established to tackle them. Each thematic network is given relatively high autonomy to pursue their own areas of higher education in ASEAN, whether it is focused on innovation or economics. They also benefit from being part of the AUN, being able to access a platform of collaboration between the AUN Secretariat, member universities, and other thematic networks.”

According to an April 8 Facebook post of the UPD Department of Political Science, their program “is the first BA program in UPD to undergo AUN-QA program assessment.”

For their part, the CHE, in their April 10 Facebook post, stated that the achievement is “a testament to the dedication, hard work, and excellence of both departments [Department of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institution Management and Department of the Food Science and Nutrition].”

Meanwhile, the AIT, in its Facebook post on April 11, stated that their program has been certified “to be on par with the academic quality of universities within the ASEAN region.”

The QAO said that with the addition of the four programs, UPD now has five programs that are AUN-QA certified. The BS (statistics) of the UPD School of Statistics received its AUN-QA certification in 2022.