COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES Free tuition to start June
MANILA — The Commission on Higher Education is currently working on the implementing rules and regulations of the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Law, which it hopes can be implemented by the next academic year.
Last week, President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law the bill granting free tuition to students studying in state universities and colleges (SUCs).
CHED Commissioner Prospero De Vera III said that the commission has ordered its staff, including the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the Department of Budget and Management and the Department of Science and Technology to work the the implementing rules and regulations of the law.
"We hope to finish the implementing rules and regulations very fast so that we can implement this in June 2018... Last night, we gave them marching orders to finish it, hopefully, within the week so that the commission can go over it, sign it within 15 days," De Vera said in a media briefing at Malacañang.
The new law expands the benefits of students by including the standard miscellaneous fees starting academic year 2018-2019.
Republic Act 10931 also covers free tuition and miscellaneous fees in 111 local government-created universities and colleges nationwide, as well as technical and vocational education under TESDA.
"The estimates that we have for the first year of implementation of the law is about P16.8 billion for the 112 SUCs and the 16 local government-created universities which have been evaluated by the Commission on Higher Education and add to that between three to four billion for technical vocational education under TESDA so the amount that we’re working on for the 2018 budget is a little over P20 billion," the commissioner said.
The budget for the implementation of the free tuition law can be sourced from current scholarship and financial assistance funds already existing in the budget of several government agencies, according to De Vera.
To prevent the massive transfer of students from private universities to SUCs, the government is looking into implementing stricter admission and retention policies so that SUCs will not adopt open admission.