CHED: State schools barred from hiking fees

MANILA, Philippines — State-funded higher education institutions (HEIs) will not be allowed to increase tuition and other fees for the next five years, according to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

CHED officer-in-charge J. Prospero de Vera said the ban is to prevent state and local universities and colleges (SUCs/LUCs) from increasing the amount that they would reimburse from the national government under the free higher education law.

“Under the new policy, the previous collection of universities of these fees will now be reimbursed by the government. SUCs and LUCs will not be allowed to increase their tuition and miscellaneous fees for the next five years,” he said.

The allocation for the implementation of the free higher education law is based on the amount collected by the institutions in previous years.

Allowing public HEIs to increase tuition and other fees may result in deficit in the allotted budget for the implementation of Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education, De Vera said.

The CHED commissioned a study to compute the standard set of fees that SUCs and LUCs may charge to the government per student.

“On the fifth year, we will allow for adjustments in the tuition and miscellaneous fees of participating public universities,” De Vera added.

“Some of the SUCs have tremendously low miscellaneous fees, like library fee of P50 per semester. There is a wide variant of fees collected across universities. We will correct this through the composite fee system that we will compute within the next five years,” he said.

The government is set to implement the free higher education policy in 113 SUCs and 78 LUCs in the upcoming semester.

Under the law, the participating HEIs will waive tuition and other fees from the students and instead reimburse them from the government.

The government allocated P16 billion to cover free higher education in SUCs and LUCs.

Hike in private HEIs

Meanwhile, CHED said it has yet to determine how many private HEIs would be allowed to increase tuition and other fees this year.

He said applications are still at the regional offices and that these will not be tackled by the CHED leadership until May.