Senator Imee Marcos on Friday called for a Senate investigation to look into reports of “padded tuition fees” in Metro Manila’s top universities due to the inclusion of no longer applicable educational expenses.
“A Senate investigation is in order, if the Commission on Higher Education cannot settle this controversy before classes resume in late August,” said Marcos in filing Senate Resolution 480 to conduct the inquiry.
Marcos noted that there has been a growing number of complaints from concerned parents and students enrolling about this tuition-padding.
“The inclusion of many miscellaneous fees for school facilities and services that would no longer be used is unnecessary and unconscionable,” Marcos said.
Complaints reaching Senator Marcos’s office said that schools in the University Belt were still charging various miscellaneous fees for the use of classroom-based internet, electricity, laboratories, libraries, and medical and dental clinics.
Marcos said it was unlikely that most students who are below 21 years old would avail of school facilities, since guidelines set in early June by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases have directed them to remain indoors during all community quarantine levels.
“Schools should not be playing blind and profiting on what they would no longer provide. Parents and students should definitely be paying less,” Marcos said.
She said that learning from home through online classes and modular lessons should be less costly than the face-to-face education before the Covid-19 pandemic.