Kabataan Party-list asks SC to junk CHED''s tuition cap suspension

The Kabataan Party-list, together with the National Union of Students, student councils and a group of young lawyers, has filed a petition before the Supreme Court to question the move of the Commission on Higher Education to suspend the tuition cap and seek for a temporary restraining order on the implementation of approved tuition hikes under CHED''s new tuition guidelines.

"We believe Chairman Carlito Puno and the Commission on Higher Education committed grave abuse of discretion when it hastily suspended the implementation of the CHED Memo Order NO. 14 without proper consultation and in violation of its own standard operating procedures," Kabataan Party-list President Raymond Palatino said.

"CHED Chairman Carlito Puno''s unilateral and shameless act shows the commission''s subservience and capitulation to strong pressure from school owners even at the expense of students. This only proves that CHED is toothless and merely functions as a rubber stamp for school owners'' business interests," he pointed out.

"Puno''s unilateral move is a policy regression which effectively revokes hard-won amendments to CHED''s policy on tuition hikes that seek to regulate the unabated school fee hikes since the implementation of the original CHED memorandum 13 in 1998.

Palatino warned that Puno''s recent statement allowing tuition hikes pegged at 10 percent and the earlier suspension of CMO 14 will sow confusion among students and parents as enrollment for the coming school year have already commenced in some private schools.

He added that the timing of CHED''s recent pronouncement is questionable as it came out after schools have already concluded their tuition hike consultations and enrollment has already begun.

"This is no different from the suspicious timing of the suspension of the tuition dap in the middle of tuition consultations in various private schools last February," he said.

"In fact school owners have already taken advantage of the suspension of the tuition cap to increase tuition beyond the inflation rate."

Meanwhile, Palatino called for a freeze on all tuition and other fee hike proposals for the coming school year pending the investigation of the anomalous suspension of the tuition cap.

"Private schools and CHED should first settle the issues over the illegal implementation of tuition and other fee hikes this past school year under the agency''s memo order no. 14 before approving proposals for another round of school fee increases."

"Implementing an obsolete CMO 13 will only make matters worse." (PR)