Accessible Education in the New Normal

FOR many Filipinos, education is a tool to lift themselves out of poverty. However, with the rising cost of obtaining a tertiary education, students might find it difficult to get their foot into colleges and universities.

Enter Republic Act No. 10687, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act. First signed into law in 2017, this is an act that “reconciles, improves, strengthens and expands government-funded modalities of Student Financial Assistance Programs (STUFAPS) for tertiary education in both public and private institutions.”

One of these programs is the Unified Student Financial Assistance for Tertiary Education or Unifast. Under this law, students attending local and state universities and colleges are exempted from paying tuition and other school fees. According to UNIFAST Secretariat Officer-in-charge and Executive Director Atty. Ryan Estevez, this law is “one of the legacies of the Duterte administration.”

“There never was in the history of the Philippine higher education that local universities and colleges were eligible to become beneficiaries of free higher education,” he said during an online webinar.

Financial assistance

FROM its implementation in 2018, Atty. Estevez shared that they have given an estimated P2.3 million to college students in terms of financial assistance who are enrolled in both public and private higher education institutions.

In addition to providing free tertiary education, UNIFAST also covers other programs, such as a Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) and a Free Technology and Vocational Education training. For these programs, Atty. Estevez shared that they worked closely with other government agencies to provide these benefits.

“We have a memorandum of agreement with DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment) and TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority), who basically implement the free tech vocation,” he said. ‘With DOLE, we have the memorandum of agreement for the Batang OFW.

This is in response to the call of the President to help our OFWS na pinauwi at namatay or nagkasakit at hindi nakapagtrabaho at nakabalik sa trabaho nila overseas. So we’re giving P30,000 one time grant per children of OFW,”

Beneficiaries

ACCORDING to Atty. Estevez, UNIFAST’S TES program has helped over 500,000 college students get through their college journey, with 60 percent of the students entering private institutions. Each student is allowed around P100,000 to pay for school fees such as tuition, and are also given an allowance amounting to forty thousand for public schools. For students attending private universities, they are also given P100,000 for school fees, but they receive P60,000 for their allowance instead.

However, UNIFAST also takes into consideration the needs of students who are persons with disabilities (PWD). For these students, UNIFAST provides an additional P30,000 in allowance.

During the same webinar, Atty Estevez also shared that UNIFAST plans to implement a student loan program that will allow students to take in short term loans to help them with other miscellaneous school expenses. However, this program is still being renegotiated with the Development Bank of the Philippines.

“Maganda po itong student loan program because you can reloan every time and wala siyang interest,” he said.

These programs might be hard to implement now during the new normal. However, Atty. Estevez along with CHED chairman Prospero “Popoy” de Vera make sure that these programs are in place and are working. At the same time, these observations proved to them that despite the changes they have created, the Philippines still has a long way to go.

“We really realized that it is a necessity to invest in education. And we are moving as CHED and UNIFAST. It is clear that we are moving towards flexible learning modalities, so that is a combination of synchronous and asynchronous, online and modular. So all this is being supported by CHED and the government as a whole through the UNIFAST,” he said.