The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) on Thursday proposed a tuition fee increase in state universities and colleges (SUCs), saying it may help address funding gaps in free tertiary education.
“Even at a very low tuition fee, you can see the high performance of our graduates from select higher education. It’s already helping, but if they increase it, it will help more,” CHED Chairperson Shirley C. Agrupis said in Filipino during the House Appropriations Committee budget hearing.
Data from the commission showed that across 113 SUCs, five institutions in Metro Manila and Zamboanga Peninsula still have a P50 per unit tuition fee. 32 schools collect P51 to P100 and 57 are priced at P101 to P200 per unit.
14 schools also collect P200 to P300 per unit, followed by five others that offer P500 to P1000 per unit.
“That is the discrepancy across state universities and colleges,” Ms. Agrupis said. “That’s why the provision of the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) should be to come up with the composite fee, five years after the implementation of UniFAST.”
Based on the UniFAST framework and the Republic Act 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, the composite fee is a standardized pricing index that combines tuition and other school fees (TOSF) based on the estimated standard cost to deliver quality education for a specific degree program.
“We are not only talking about different tuition fee rates, but they also differ in miscellaneous fees,” Ms. Agrupis said. “This is the reason why there are universities that are rich and poor.”
Under the proposed multi-year pre-composite fee, raising the tuition to P200 per unit would require an additional P2.4 billion on top of the existing P9.1 billion tuition fee collection in the current budget.
The increase will benefit 94 of 113 schools that still have tuition fees below P200 per unit.
Raising the per-unit fee to P250 will require an additional P4.2 billion, while P300 and P500 per unit will need P6.2 billion and P9.1 billion, respectively.
Party-list Rep. Antonio L. Tinio backed the tuition hike proposal, claiming it will help mitigate funding deficiencies and allow SUCs to create more job orders and contract of service workers.
“We favor the tuition fee increase in state universities. To clarify, the increase will not be charged to students. Instead, this serves as the basis for the government subsidy, so it’s very important,” he said during the budget hearing.
“If the tuition will not be increased, we will accumulate deficiencies again,” he added.
Last month, CHED and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) outlined the rules for releasing P12.31 billion in funding to cover tuition deficiencies in SUCs for Academic Years 2022 to 2025.
Of the total, P7.82 billion will be sourced from unused Higher Education Development Fund (HEDF) balances from previous years, and P4.49 billion will come from the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education allocations.
In the 2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP), the tertiary education budget stands at P176.5 billion, including a P35.43 billion allocation for CHED and P141.09 billion for SUCs. — Almira Louise S. Martinez