248 private colleges seek tuition hike
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) announced yesterday that 248 private higher education institutions (HEIs) have applied for an increase of their tuition and other fees for academic year (AY) 2018-2019.
In a press briefing, CHED Officer-in-Charge (OIC) J. Prospero de Vera, III said that based on the data submitted by CHED Regional Offices (ROs), of the 248 (14.98%) private HEIs have applied for increase, 238 (14.37%) have applied for tuition increase. Meanwhile, 221 (13.5%) HEIs have applied for increase in other school fees (OSF).
De Vera, however, clarified that this is only initial data and have yet to finalize the approved number of HEIs yet. This number, he noted, does not include HEIs in Region 4 since it has yet to submit final data as well as HEIs in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) since these are not covered by CHED. The number of private HEIs, excluding ARMM, is 1,652.
“This number may go down depending on the decision of the (Commission) en banc which will hopefully released by next week,” De Vera said.
36 disapproved In the regional level, De Vera said that a total of 36 private HEIs “have been disapproved” due to lack of supporting documents, deficiencies or non-compliance to the policies of CHED on tuition increase and late filing of application.
Tuition markdown While there were private HEIs that applied for tuition and OSF increase, De Vera noted that there are also HEIs that reported decrease in OSF such as Philippine Women’s College of Davao in Region 12; Colegio de San Juan de Letran and De La Salle College of Saint Benilde in the National Capital Region (NCR).
Majority of HEIs did not hike tuition
For AY 2018-2019, CHED data showed that the average percentage for HEIs with increase is 11.98% (R113.95) while the average for all private HEIs is 0.02% (R0.13%). In SY 2017-2018, for the PHEIs that applied CHED approved 7.08% increase and 5.10% increase in SY 2016-2017.
“The good news is majority of private HEIs is not increasing fees, only a small percentage have applied for tuition and other fees increase,” De Vera said. “The impact of this, overall, is not as bad as speculated,” he added.