Only 78 local universities and colleges covered by free tuition law

MANILA, Philippines — Only students in 78 out of 107 local universities and colleges (LUCs) nationwide are covered by the implementation of the free higher education law for the next school year, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) announced on Wednesday.

A list released by the CHED showed that some LUCs such as the Quezon City Polytechnic University and University of Makati did not qualify for the free higher education program in school year 2018-2019.

CHED officer-in-charge J. Prospero de Vera said not all LUCs were able to submit the necessary documents needed for them to qualify for the implementation of Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act of 2017.

“What the law requires is that local government-created colleges and universities that have been evaluated by CHED shall have access to the subsidy… We set a deadline and some of them were not able to submit the documents,” De Vera said.

“We will continue evaluating the LUCs. Next school year, we will release the next batch of compliant LUCs that can avail themselves of free tuition and other miscellaneous fees,” he added.

Unlike the 113 state universities and colleges (SUCs) that are automatically covered by the law, LUCs need to first pass the evaluation by CHED.

SUCs are funded by the national government while LUCs are supported by the local government units that created them.

De Vera said the 80 LUCs that qualified for free higher education in the upcoming school year are those that obtained institutional recognition or full program compliance of CHED policies and standards.

He said it was not a practice of LUCs to obtain institutional recognition in the past, instead opting for recognition on a per program basis.

De Vera said 300,000 out of 1.3 million students who will benefit from the policy are enrolled in LUCs.

The number is expected to increase in the succeeding years as more LUCs are expected to qualify for the program.

CHED released this week the implementing rules and regulations for the implementation of the free higher education law.

In addition to free tuition and miscellaneous fees in SUCs and qualified LUCs, the law also provides for the implementation of a tertiary education subsidy for public and private college students, as well as a national student loan program.

“It is the biggest landmark legislation in higher education in history in terms of coverage and public expenditure,” De Vera said.

“We are allocating about P41 billion in the first year of its implementation,” he added.

Tuition refund

Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV urged the CHED to prioritize the refund of tuition and other fees paid by the students of SUCs during the second semester of the current school year.

Aquino said the CHED and Department of Budget and Management (DBM) should work on refunding the fees paid by students.

He pointed out that the national budget for this year covers tuition and miscellaneous fees of students of SUCs.

Aquino said the DBM, Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office and CHED should ensure that there would be no legal impediments in using the budget to cover tuition and miscellaneous fees for the second semester of 2017-2018. – Marvin Sy