When Republic Act 10931, known as the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, was signed into law in August 2017, it gave Filipino youth, particularly those from poor and underprivileged families, the opportunity to pursue college degrees through free tuition and exemption from other fees in state colleges and universities (SUCs).
This law also created a Tertiary Education Subsidy that sponsors the enrolment of disadvantaged students in private institutions in locations where there are no available state or local universities and colleges.
With the implementation of free higher education in the country starting in 2018, an estimated 1.6 million Filipino students benefited from it.
Of this number, 1.3 million were beneficiaries from 112 state universities and colleges while at least 300,000 were from local SUCs.
For school year 2020-2021, around 500,000 slots were also opened for the tertiary education subsidy, much higher than the 200,000 slots when the law was passed.
If scholarships for agriculture and other courses were factored in, then close to 2.5 million students stood to benefit from free higher education.
But the Department of Finance recently declared that government subsidy for free college education was “untenable,” resulting in a reduced budget for SUCs for next year.
This is unfortunate.
The House of Representatives has approved a P100.882-billion appropriation for SUCs in the 2024 budget. This is lower by P6.155 billion, or 5.75 percent, than this year’s P107.0297-billion allocation.
The sharp cut in the budget for SUCs has understandably raised the hackles of these educational institutions, with students, faculty and non-academics personnel of the SUCs, among them the University of the Philippines, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and Philippine Normal University signing a joint statement calling on lawmakers to restore the budget cut and even increase the higher education spending for next year.
By diverting what were supposed to be a total P650 million for intelligence and confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and Department of Education, they said, lawmakers can significantly improve the capability of SUCs to allow more Filipino students to avail themselves of college education they need to significantly improve their chances of improving their quality of life in the future.
We urge the Marcos administration to give priority to higher education in the country through sustained increases in the budgets of SUCs.
This is an investment in the future that conforms to what the 1987 Constitution mandates as the responsibility of the state to protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality education at all levels and to make such education accessible to all.
