Economic team rejects free tuition
The Duterte administration’s economic team recommended the full funding of the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (Uni-FAST) as alternative to the proposed legislation on free tuition for all undergraduate students in State Universities and Colleges (SUCs).
In a joint statement, Socioeconomic Planning
Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, and Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno unanimously endorsed Uni-FAST.
The cabinet officials said, Uni-FAST provides a more coherent and comprehensive framework to address the educational needs of the students and is better designed to ensure a more efficient and effective use of government funds.
“We recognize that college education is important for Filipinos, based on the results of the focus group discussions and survey on AMBISYON Natin 2040,” Pernia said.
“Many employers also prefer college graduates. However, we need to carefully study our options for helping people achieve their aspirations for higher education, considering other needs,” he added.
Non-poor students According to the economic managers, the proposed free-tuition policy will benefit largely non-poor students who predominate SUCs.
In 2014, only 12 percent of the students in SUCs belong to the bottom 20 percent of the family income classification based on the Annual Poverty Indicators Survey.
Based on the grant structure of the government’s Student Grants-In-Aid Program for Poverty Alleviation (SGPPA), tuition constitutes merely one-third (120,000) of the annual cost of 160,000 per student covered by the grant.
The bigger chunk in the cost of college education is for living expenses (at 135,000 for 10 months) and instructional materials (15,000).
Accordingly, with the government’s provision of free tuition for all SUC students, poor families would still be unable to pay for the remaining twothirds balance of college education cost, thereby still preventing them from sending their children to college.
Ideal
Established in 2014 under Republic Act No. 10687, Uni-FAST is designed to unify and harmonize all modalities of publicly-funded Student Financial Assistance Programs such as scholarships, grants-in-aid, and student loans for tertiary education.
The law provides full financing to deserving students, which generally favors the poor.
The economic managers pointed out possible adverse implications of an across-the-board free tuition policy, including the exodus of students towards SUCs from private Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs).
“Also, the budgetary support for free tuition will be difficult to sustain,” the Cabinet officials said in their joint statement.
They explained that if the college tuition funding requirement is to be based on the national average tuition fee of SUCs under the SGP-PA – which is at 120,000 per annum – the estimated 1.4 million students currently enrolled in SUCs would require about 128 billion of budgetary support.
Thus, the economic managers stressed Uni-FAST’s other advantages over the across-the-board free tuition proposal.
These include a clear delineation among its three modes of financial assistance in terms of objectives and target beneficiaries, applicability in both SUCs and private HEIs, a test-based eligibility requirement, and its adherence to the acceptable standards of the Commission on Higher Education.
“The government should implement its mandate of promoting quality and accessible education within the limits of fiscal prudence, and with the use of appropriate tools and targeting mechanism. The Uni-FAST is better designed to ensure a more efficient and effective use of government funds,” explained the economic managers.