MANUELITO A. ISABELO, JR., PETITIONER, VS. PERPETUAL HELP COLLEGE OF RIZAL, INC., AND DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND SPORTS, RESPONDENTS.

A student, Manuelito Isabelo, Jr., filed the instant petition for
mandamus with the following prayer:

“WHEREFORE, petitioner prays for a writ of mandamus
addressed to the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) to
implement its order to re-admit him as a senior
graduating student of respondent Perpetual Help College of Rizal (PHCR), and
for the latter to re-admit him as a senior graduating student for March, 1992.

He prays for a temporary mandatory restraining order to compel his
re-admission as a senior graduating student for
March 1992 while his petition is pending resolution.”^[1]

We
granted, in our resolution of 23 June 1992, the temporary mandatory
relief prayed for.

Manuelito was enrolled at the Perpetual Help College of Rizal
(“PHCR”) for the degree of Bachelor
of Science in Criminology. He
was elected Public Relations Officer (“PRO”) of the Supreme Student
Council some time in August 1990. Until
September 1991, he was the hold-over PRO and the acting Secretary of the
student council. In this capacity, he
was invited to attend a meeting with PHCR officials on 08 May 1991. Prior to said meeting, he was asked by the
Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Grace De Leon, to sign Resolution No.
105 that would implement, among other things, a 20% tuition fee increase for
the school year 1991-1992.^[2]
Manuelito refused to sign the resolution; instead, he asked for a 2-week period
to take the matter up with his fellow officers.^[3]

During the scheduled 08 May 1991 meeting, the student council
presented to PHCR a 9-point proposal. With an assurance that the request of the student council would be
considered favorably, the petitioner finally signed Resolution No. 105.

On 06 August 1991, PHCR announced that its application for
increase in tuition fees and other school charges for SY 1991-1992 for the
three levels, namely, the Grade School, High School and College, was approved
by the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports (“DECS”).^[4]
The student council filed with the DECS a motion for reconsideration. Acting on the students’ motion, the DECS, in
its letter of 28 August 1991 addressed to the President of PHCR, advised that
the “collection of the increase (should) be held in abeyance pending the
resolution of (the) matter.”^[5]

In the meantime, the CMT commandant furnished PHCR a memorandum,
dated 20 August 1991, containing a list of PHCR CMT students (Manuelito
included) who were dropped during the
first semester of school year 1991-1992, with a recommendation that appropriate
action be taken on said students.^[6]

On 04 September 1991, the school administration circulated a
memorandum^[7]
to the effect that Manuelito had been dropped from PHCR’s list of
students. On even date, a letter^[8]
from Registrar Necy Buen was received by Manuelito, informing him that PHCR was
voiding his enrollment for the first semester of 1991-1992 because of the
following deficiencies:

” * Non compliance of CMT requirement as per
DECS Order No. 9, S. 1990 and DECS Memorandum No. 80, S. 1991 and PHCR Internal
Memo. No. 891-007;

* No NCEE during the admission in the BS Criminology course;

* Official Admission Credential not yet submitted;

* Void declaration of CMT subjects (MS 11, 12, 21 and 22) which are
docketed in the registration card.”

Beginning 05 September 1991, Manuelito was
no longer allowed to enter the school premises. He forthwith sent a letter to the DECS informing the latter of
the matter.

On 15 October 1991, Director Rosas of the DECS issued an order^[9]
addressed to the President of PHCR, stating, inter alia, that:

“* * * concerning the dropping from the rolls without due
process of the students-petitioners * * *, Manuelito Isabelo, Jr., * * *,
please be advised that pending resolution thereof, the propriety of allowing
the students to continue attending their classes to protect their interest as
well as that of the school, is hereby enjoined.

In this connection, it is hereby directed that the above-named
students be readmitted to classes and be allowed to take all examinations that
they have missed pending final resolution of this case/issue.”

PHCR did not comply with the directive.

Hence, this recourse. The
petitioner questions PHCR’s act
of voiding his enrollment.

While this Court, on 23 June 1992, issued a preliminary mandatory
injunction ordering and directing PCHR to re-admit the petitioner for
enrollment,^[10]
the same was interdicted by PHCR’s motion for clarification^[11]
that indeed would require factual assessments that have yet to be conclusively
passed upon administratively.

The petitioner claims that the real reason why PHCR has voided
his enrollment as a senior graduating student had been because of his active
participation in opposing PHCR’s application for tuition fee increase with the
DECS.

The private respondent, on the other hand, invokes “academic
freedom” in dropping the petitioner from its roll of students. It argues that the petitioner has only been
allowed to enroll “conditionally” during the first semester of school
year 1991-92 pending the completion of his remedial classes in CMT, in which he
has failed.

The rule in this jurisdiction since Garcia vs. Loyola School of
Theology,^[12]
reiterated in Tangonan vs. Paño,^[13] has
been to uphold the rule that admission to an institution of higher learning is
discretionary upon the school and that such an admission is a mere privilege,
rather than a right, on the part of the student. In Ateneo de Manila University vs. Capulong,^[14]
this Court cited with approval the formulation made by Justice Felix
Frankfurter of the essential freedoms subsumed in the term “academic
freedom”^[15]
encompassing not only “the freedom to determine * * * on academic grounds
who may teach, what may be taught (and)
how it shall be taught,”
but likewise “who may be admitted to study.” We have thus sanctioned its
valid invocation by a school in
rejecting students who are academically delinquent,^[16]
or a laywoman seeking admission to a
seminary,^[17] or students violating “School
Rules on Discipline.”^[18]

Like any other right, however, academic freedom has never been
meant to be an unabridged license. It
is a privilege that assumes a correlative duty to exercise it responsibly. An equally telling precept is a long
recognized mandate, so well expressed in Article 19 of the Civil Code, that
every “person must, in the exercise
of his rights and in the performance of his duties,
act with justice, give everyone his due, and observe honesty and good faith.”

Another observation. In
Non vs. Dames II,^[19] we
have already abandoned our earlier ruling in Alcuaz vs. PSBA^[20]
(that enrolment of a student is a semester to-semester contract, and that the
school may not be compelled to renew the contract) by recognizing instead the
right of a student to be enrolled for the entire period required in order to
complete his course. We have also stressed that the contract between
the school and the student, imbued, as it is, with public interest, is not an
ordinary contract.^[21]

In this instance, it would seem that the principal reason
forwarded by the private respondent in dropping the petitioner from its roll of
students was his failure to complete some remaining units in the CMT
course. He was unceremoniously dropped
from the roll when the semester was about to end some time in October. He took a special training during the
semestral break (which was the most reasonable time to comply), and he was able
to pass it, but PHCR still refused to give him that accreditation, insisting
that he by then had ceased to be a student of PHCR.

While we ordinarily would not delve into the exercise of sound
judgment, we will not, however, hesitate to act when we perceive taints of
arbitrariness in the process. The
punishment of expulsion appears to us rather disproportionate to his having had
some unit deficiencies in his CMT course. Indeed, the DECS itself is conceding to the grant of the instant
petition. The circumstances lend truth
to the petitioner’s claim that the private respondent has strongly been
influenced by his active participation in questioning PHCR’s application for
tuition fee increase.

There remains, however, an administrative determination, to be
yet resolved with finality by the DECS, i.e., whether the petitioner really
deserves to be in the senior class, as he claims, or has a number of school
deficiencies to overcome, as the respondent school counters. Hence, the issuance of a writ of mandamus
at this time would not be warranted. We
have repeatedly said that for a writ of
mandamus to issue, a petitioner should, on the one hand, have a clear
legal right to the thing demanded, and
there should be, upon the other hand, an imperative duty of a respondent to
perform the act sought to be mandated.^[22] This Court, not being a trier of facts,^[23] must remand this matter to the DECS for its
own evaluation and final determination.

WHEREFORE, this case is hereby REMANDED to the
Department of Education, Culture and Sports for its expeditious determination
on the unresolved administrative issues raised in the instant petition. No costs.

SO ORDERED.

Narvasa, C.J., Cruz, Feliciano, Padilla, Bidin, Regalado,
Davide, Jr., Romero, Nocon, Bellosillo, Melo, Quiason, and Puno, JJ., concur.

Griño-Aquino, J., retired.

^[1]
Rollo, 18.

^[2]
Rollo, 174.

^[3]
Ibid.

^[4]
Annex “H”, Petition, Rollo,
36.

^[5]
Annex “K”, Ibid., ibid.,
48.

^[6]
Annex “C,” Comment, Ibid.,
92-93.

^[7]
Annex “L”, Petition, ibid.,
49.

^[8]
Annex “D”, Comment, Ibid.,
94.

^[9]
Annex “Q”, Petition, Ibid.,
54.

^[10]
Rollo, 166-167.

^[11]
Ibid., 200-202.

^[12]
68 SCRA 277/1975/.

^[13]
137 SCRA 245/1985/.

^[14]
G.R. No. 99327, 27 May 1993, penned by
Mme. Justice Flerida Ruth P. Romero.

^[15]
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354
U.S. 234,263/1957/.

^[16]
Tangonan, supra.

^[17]
Loyola School of Theology, supra.

^[18]
Ateneo De Manila University, supra.

^[19]
185 SCRA 523/1990/.

^[20]
161 SCRA 7/1988/.

^[21]
Ibid.; see also Philippine School of
Business Administration vs. Court of Appeals, 205 SCRA 729,733/1992/.

^[22]
Canonizado vs. Benitez, 127 SCRA
610/1984/; Taboy vs. Court of Appeals, 105 SCRA 758/1981/ Province of
Pangasinan vs. Reparations Commission, 80 SCRA 376/1977/; Ocampo vs.
Subido, 72 SCRA 443/1976/.

^[23]
Soriano III vs. Yuzon, 164 SCRA
226/1988/; Blue Bar Coconut Phil. vs. Tantuico, Jr., 163 SCRA 716/1988/;
Korean Airlines Co., Ltd. vs.
CA, 154 SCRA 211/1987/.