The proposed nationwide entrance test for higher education should focus more on equity to ensure that poor students would have better chances of admission to state universities and colleges (SUCs), Commission on Higher Education chairman Prospero de Vera III said.
De Vera made the statement in response to the proposal of Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno to review the free college education system in SUCs to “filter, through a nationwide test, those who should be entitled to free education.”
De Vera said it would be “disastrous” if the proposed nationwide test would be like the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT).
“Those who pass the UPCAT are students coming from relatively richer families from urban areas who have the money to do review classes, who are more prepared to pass the admission test. Is that the admission test we want in this country?” De Vera said in a television interview.
De Vera said it is the government’s responsibility to help poor families, those who are coming from public schools, the children of indigenous communities, and the children of rebel returnees.
“We have a responsibility as a country to take steps to make sure that we bring them to the mainstream. We bring them to get educated. We give them hope so that they will not fight the government so that insurgency will be reduced,” he said.
In Diokno’s proposal, the “score of the examinee will determine which SUC and its campus he or she will be assigned.”
The Finance chief said those who passed the nationwide exam and are entitled to “free” education should be allowed to use their entitlement, which would be a four-year voucher, to enter or reject their assigned state university or choose an accredited private university.
“He may refuse to enroll in an SUC assigned to him and instead attend any government-accredited private university that will admit him. Of course, the voucher will be released on an annual basis and will be based on the satisfactory performance of the government scholar,” Diokno said.
Diokno cited the rising dropout rate as “an indicator of wastefulness” of the free college education law.
CHED data showed that 36.83 percent of college students who entered the School Year 2020–2021 had dropped out or temporarily left schooling.
“Government resources funded by taxpayers’ money, by nature are finite. The present regime is unwieldy, inefficient, and wasteful,” Diokno said.
