Unnecessary complications

The National Union of Students of the Philippines is slamming the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) on Saturday for "further complicating" the implementation of free education in the country.

CHED is spoiling the intended objectives of free education by tampering the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the free education law.

CHED is making its own problem by devising a complex mechanism of implementation, when in fact, they can just make education free, no exceptions and no reservations.

What makes this free-ed law difficult in terms of execution is CHED's hesitation to provide free education for everybody. When we say universal access, tuition and other school fees (TOSF) should be scrapped, no exclusions and no questions asked.

Free-ed law and the draft IRR did not explicitly abolish the collection of TOSF in state universities and colleges (SUCs).

This allows SUCs to "maneuver" their way to TOSF collection. Among those schools is the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, where miscellaneous fees amounting 2,000 to 4,000 pesos are still collected from students. Worse, despite the existing free tuition program, freshmen were still charged tuition fees.

Some students in University of the Philippines Diliman were forced to opt out of the policy and had to pay tuition even though they were qualified for free tuition.

NUSP attributes the late release of the free-ed IRR to CHED's "apparent bias" towards owners of private higher educational institutions.

The problem with CHED is that it keeps on listening to the demands of private HEIs: to collect more profits.

CHED shares the phobia of private school owners on the huge possibility of an exodus of students from private schools due to this law. To accommodate their desires, CHED willingly creates another wave of headaches as it implements free education. The planned voucher system for college students and the student loan program will simply ensure the private sector's share of students' and public funds.

If CHED wants to make everything hard for itself by not readily implementing free education, we students will gladly make their headaches worse. We will not stop banging their gates until they make education free for everyone.

The scheduled release of the IRR by February 22 will not deter us from pushing the set February 23 national day of walkout to call for free education and to oppose the planned increase in fees in private universities.

Raoul Manuel

NUSP Deputy Secretary General