DepEd eyes exclusion of rich students from subsidy

MANILA, Philippines — State university administrators and the government need to fix the implementation of free college tuition subsidies to prevent wealthy students from pushing out deserving and underprivileged students from the program, Education Secretary Sonny Angara said.

Angara said fixing the implementation of the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act was crucial, as resources for the education sector have been thinly spread after education subsidy was expanded to college.

“A lot of the resources maybe that should have gone to basic education is being spread more thinly, so now… even students in UP (University of the Philippines) are (tuition) free, but if you look at the students in UP, so many come from well-off families,” Angara told “Thought Leaders” yesterday on One News.

Angara, a UP alumnus, said the government should not subsidize “kids of the rich, but that’s what we’re doing with the existing implementation.”

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) had previously acknowledged how admission policies of state universities and colleges have been a problem for “quite some time” as these remain skewed in favor of children who come from privileged households, especially in sought-after institutions like UP and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

CHED commissioned a P15-million study earlier this year to determine how state universities and colleges (SUC) craft admission policies that “ensure there is a fair representation of disadvantaged students in higher education.”

Three segments of the study are being conducted respectively by the Don Mariano Marcos State University, Samar State University and University of Southern Mindanao.

For its part, UP said it was experimenting on measures to ensure greater access to students who come from underserved communities.

Among these is allowing those who did not pass the UP College Admissions Test to study for associate degrees, which could determine whether they can qualify for regular courses after two years.

As more underprivileged college students drop out every year due to financial difficulties, Angara said the government needs to focus on free college education for deserving students and prevent the “ones who don’t need it” from getting subsidy.

“Subsidize the ones who really need it and those who are rich… I mean, what’s P200,000 for a rich family? That’s not even worth one vacation for them,” he added.

As of 2023, CHED reported over two million SUC students are receiving free tertiary education across 200 institutions nationwide.