NUSP slams CHED over looming hike in tuition fees

MANILA, Philippines - The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and the Kabataan Partylist filed a formal complaint before the Commission on Higher Education over CHED’s failure to stop plans by colleges and universities to hike tuition and other fees for academic year 2010-11.

Einstein Recedes, NUSP national president, said that several schools have already expressed their intention to hike tuition and other fees for the coming school year despite the grim economic situation being faced by students and their families all over the country.

Recedes complained that state schools including the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) were among higher education institutions which will hike their fees by hefty rates.

“Our seething frustration towards CHED is primarily due to CHED’s lack of concern in at least regulating tuition and other fee increases. Many schools in the NCR will increase tuition up to 20 percent,” Recedes said.

The PUP, a school where poor but academically-deserving students go for their college education, will have a 2,000 percent increase, Recedes bared.

Emmanuel Angeles, CHED chairman, for his part, said that the agency’s hands are tied on the matter of tuition fee hikes as long as higher education institutions follow the law governing the imposition of higher fees.

“We have a law regulating the increase of tuition fees. We can do nothing about it as long as the schools follow the process on the increase of tuition fees,” Angeles told The STAR in a phone interview.

The law, Angeles explained, requires that schools should consult the student council, the faculty association, the parents association on the tuition fee hike they are planning to impose.

Angeles said that the law also sets a distribution on the proceeds of the fees that will be collected from such hikes, where 70 percent of the increase goes to the pay of faculty, 20 percent to improvement of facilities, and the remaining 10 percent to the school as return on investment.

On the matter of the PUP planning a hike of 2,000 percent, Angeles said he will look into it first. Angeles said that he is ready to step in and stop such an increase if he confirms such a plan.