THE tuition in all the undergraduate programs of all State Universities and Colleges will be free following an additional P8.3 billion in funding granted to the Commission on Higher Education, its chairwoman Patricia Licuanan said Friday.
“For that P8 billion, that’s purely for tuition. That’s purely removed tuition from the student expenses,” Licuanan said in a TV interview.
“So now they can say that it will be implemented to all SUCs [State Universities and Colleges]. There won’t be any tuition.”
But Licuanan said “It will be a bit of a challenge” to divide the P8.3-billion funding among all 113 SUCs nationwide.
“So we cannot spend the P8 billion on anything else except to compensate the schools except for the fact that they can no longer charge tuition,” Licuanan said.
“Logistically, it will be a little difficult. So how do you share, how do you divide up P8 billion among 113 SUCs? And that includes UP [University of the Philippines].
“What formula do you use? The tuition of the school times the number of enrollees? These are the challenges, and we are working on it.”
Licuanan also said that, eventually, they hoped to come up with a formula that would give priority to the needy.
“That would be our initial preference, to kind of calibrate it in a way that those who need it more will get more,” Licuanan said.
“Free tuition will help tremendously. It will free the resources of families and students for the other costs.”
But Licuanan said that locally funded schools, colleges and universities and programs for Masters and Doctoral degrees and other school fees would not be included in the free tuition scheme.
