Gov’t targets IRR for free college tuition law completed in 15 days
THE NEW law granting free tuition for qualified students in all state universities and colleges (SUCs) is likely to be fully implemented in June 2018 with the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) targeted to be signed in 15 days, an official from the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) said on Thursday.
On Aug. 3, President Rodrigo R. Duterte signed into law Republic Act No. (RA) 1093, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, despite warnings from his economic managers that the measure will cost the government as much as P100 billion a year.
“Yesterday, we had the first meeting (for the IRR)… We gave them marching orders to finish it hopefully within the week, so that the Commission can go over it, the other agencies can go over it and hopefully sign it within 15 days, if possible,” Prospero E. de Vera III, CHEd commissioner, told reporters in Malacañang.
Mr. De Vera said CHEd is studying some components of the free tuition law to ensure SUCs would “tighten” their admission and retention policies to allay fears of some private schools that there will be a “massive transfer of students.”
“So we will be telling the state universities... to make sure that their admission and retention policies do not adopt an open admission,” he said.
On Monday, Mr. Duterte said he signed the law despite knowing that the state has no budget yet for the program. He said the lack of funds to bankroll the fresh law is his “problem” now.
According to Mr. De Vera the first year of the law’s enforcement may cost the government P20 billion, adding that CHEd will try to look for funds from existing scholarship programs of the government as well as other funding sources from the 2018 National Expenditure Program. —