Senator vows to oppose reducing fund for scholarships

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Thursday said he would fight for the budget of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and oppose any effort to slash the funding of the agency’s financial assistance programs to students.

“We will not allow any reduction in available scholarship funds,” Gatchalian said in a statement, referring to CHED’s Student Financial Assistance Programs (StuFAPs).

“Kaya nga tayo nagkaroon ng Free Higher Education Law ay para madagdagan sana ang mga subsidy na kasalukuyang ibinibigay sa mga mga mag-aaral, hindi upang palitan ang mga ito (The reason why we passed the Free Higher Education law is to augment the subsidy that is currently given to students, not to alter it),” said Gatchalian.

Gatchalian is one of the authors of the Republic Act 10931 or the Free Higher Education Law which seeks to grant free tuition to students enrolled in state and local universities and colleges nationwide.

But under the proposed 13.757trillion national budget for 2019, the budget for CHED’s StuFAPs has been cut from this year’s 14.7 billion to 11.7 billion for 2019.

The senator said retaining or even increasing CHED’s 2018 budget was “actually a matter of synchronizing the fiscal year to school year,” in light of the national government’s proposal to shift to a cash-based budgeting system for 2019.

Gatchalian also slammed the significant reduction in CHED’s capital outlay for infrastructure, from 148-million in 2018 to “just a paltry” 16.9-million next year.

“These funds need to be retained because improving access to higher education is useless if the quality will suffer,” he said.

“Marami ka ngang enrollees dahil libre ang tuition at ibang mga fees, pero kung bumaba naman ang kalidad ng pagtuturo at itininuturo, wala ring silbi, (you may have a lot of enrollees because tuition and other school fees are free, but if the quality of teaching and courses diminishes, then it’s useless),” the senator said.

He also said improving the infrastructure of higher education institutions is an important aspect of advancing the quality of higher education in the country.

Gatchalian said educational access and quality are two distinct indicators that must both be given ample funding in the 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

“Our budget must be responsive to the needs of the people, especially the students and the youth. We as legislators, who hold the power of the purse, must work together to ensure that the government upholds its constitutional obligation to make education the highest budgetary priority of the State,” the lawmaker stressed.

According to CHED Officer-inCharge Prospero De Vera III, with the proposed cuts, students enrolled in state universities and colleges (SUCs) will still have free tuition and other school fees, but would no longer receive additional stipends due to the 64-percent budget cut.

De Vera also pointed out that 35 of the country’s state universities were not allotted infrastructure funding for the construction of new buildings and classrooms.

The budget cuts are attributed to the Duterte administration’s plans to shift from a multi-year, obligation-based budget system to a cash-based one, which will only allow funding for projects that can be initiated and completed within the calendar year.

The Senate finance committee, chaired by Sen. Loren Legarda, has said that the Senate will support Malacañang’s cash-based budget plans.