Free tertiary education law welcomed
PRRD’s signing of the law will expand the access of the Filipino youth to higher education. We praise PRRD for standing against the position of his economic managers. During the House of Representatives’ budget hearing, Department of Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin Diokno and National Economic and Development Authority Director General Ernesto Pernia that the government cannot afford to finance free education in the tertiary level, that this proposal will only benefit the individual and not the country and is detrimental to private colleges and universities. It seems that these two economic managers are not working for the government, they are more of a spokesperson for the private education businessmen.
Based from the data submitted by the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC) to the Senate Committee on Education, 77% of the students in the SUCs are from the families of minimum-wage earners and below. This data shows that majority of the students are struggling daily to support expenses needed in their studies and that imposition/collection of fees (tuition and miscellaneous) may further erode their hope to finish college education. Many of these students tend to be only part time student as he/ she should work to help his/her family to finance his/her studies. We want to help our students focus on their studies so they can develop fully their potentials and achieve holistic development and the legislation of the Free Higher Education Act will help us towards this end. As educators, this is our goal for our students.
As with PRRD’s approval of the law, we call on all students, parents and teachers to be watchful and ensure that the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the law will not twist the intent of the law and to continue launching mass actions to call on the Philippine Congress to include the budgetary requirements of the law. We call on PRRD to instruct his Budget Secretary to include the budget needs of the free higher education in its budget for 2018.