Higher education becomes more expensive

According to the latest study of the Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis (IDEA) higher education becomes increasingly unaffordable for Filipinos, with cost per unit reaching up to P2,000 in some Metro Manila private schools as of 2005. A semester's tuition and miscellaneous fees in a reputable private university today can cost a parent about P30,000-P50,000, exclusive of books and allowance. CHED estimates that today's completion rate of college and university student is less than 50 percent, primarily due to financial constraints. There are two usual reasons for raising tuition fees among schools: to cope with inflation or increase in wages, and to improve the quality of personnel, curriculum and facilities.

Many institutions today, however, seem to fail in justifying the increase in the prices of their services. In its Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry, NSO reported that private higher education institutions earned as much as P33.4 billion in 2002. As a response to this, CHED in 2004 mandated all schools to first reach a consensus with parents and acquire an approval from its office before implementing an increase (autonomous and deregulated institutions however are exempted from this). By law, the tuition fee must be allocated as follows: 70 percent for salary, 20 percent for improvements, and 10 percent for return on investment. CHED also warned that they will set a cap on miscellaneous fees in the future. This is because of confirmed reports that some schools have misleading claims that they do not raise tuition fees, yet unreasonably jack up miscellaneous fees. Recently, CHED proposed to peg tuition fee hikes to inflation to mitigate this trend.

The overall performance of higher education, in terms of the average passing percentage in professional licensure examinations (an important indicator of education quality), worsened across all the disciplines, sliding down from 45.35 percent in 2000 to 41.71 in 2003, according to the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC). In the nursing field, 42 out of 94 nursing schools that had at least 5 years of board performance have zero percent passing rates. A study conducted by Dr. Edita Tan of the UP School of Economics entitled, "College Fee Structure and Philippine Inflation," published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) in 2003, concluded that data for both private higher education institutions and SUCs show that passing rates in licensure examinations do not necessarily go up as tuition and other school fee are increased. Finally, contrary to the popular belief that private institutions cater better services, public higher education institutions registered an average passing percentage of 40.9 percent against 38.8 percent for the private institutions. (To be continued)

Editor's Note: Mr. Ed F. Limtingco, is the VisMin Manager of CIBI Information, Inc., a business information and receivables management company. For credit & collection questions and inquiries, he can be reached at 0917-8309741 or email him at elimtingco@cibi.net.ph