Economic execs propose financing, not free tuition

In a joint position paper, the country’s economic man­agers have recommended a fund called the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) as an alternative to moves in Congress to grant free tuition for all undergradu­ate students in state universi­ties and colleges (SUCs).

“The government should implement its mandate of pro­moting quality and accessible education within the limits of fiscal prudence, and with the use of appropriate tools and targeting mechanism. The UniFAST is better designed to ensure a more efficient and ef­fective use of government funds,” the paper said.

The paper, signed by Socioeconom­ic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, and Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno, said UniFAST provides a more coherent and comprehensive framework to address the educational needs of the students and is better designed to ensure a more efficient and effective use of govern­ment funds.

The paper said if the college tuition funding requirement was to be based on the national average tuition of SUCs, which is at P20,000 per annum, the esti­mated 1.4 million students currently en­rolled in SUCs would require about P28 billion of budgetary support from the gov­ernment to cover the students’ total tui­tion requirements.

“We recognize that college education is important for Filipinos, based on the re­sults of the focus group discussions and survey on AmBisyon Natin 2040. Many employers prefer college graduates,” Pernia said.

“However, we need to carefully study our options for helping people achieve their aspirations for higher education, considering other needs,” he added.

“The proposed free-tuition policy would benefit largely the non-poor stu­dents who predominate in SUCs. In 2014, only 12 percent of the students attending SUCs belonged to the bottom 20 percent of the family income classification based on the Annual Poverty Indicators Survey,” the paper stated.

Tuition does not comprise the biggest share of college education cost.

Based on the grant structure of the government’s Student Grants-In-Aid Pro­gram for Poverty Alleviation (SGP-PA) cit­ed in the paper, tuition constitutes merely one-third (P20,000) of the annual cost of P60,000 per student covered by the grant.

The bigger chunk of college educa­tion cost is for living expenses (at P35,000 for 10 months) and instructional materials (P5,000).

With the government’s provision of free tuition to all SUC students, poor fam­ilies would still be unable to pay for the re­maining two-thirds balance of college ed­ucation cost, thereby still preventing them from sending their children to college.

Established in 2014 through Repub­lic Act 10687, the UniFAST is designed to unify and harmonize all forms of publicly funded Student Financial Assistance Pro­grams such as scholarships, grants-in-aid and student loans for tertiary education. The law provides full financing to deserv­ing students, which generally favors the poor.

The economic managers pointed out the possible adverse implications of an across-the-board free tuition policy, in­cluding the exodus of students towards SUCs from private Higher Educational In­stitutions (HEIs), which would eventually affect the overall quality of graduates, giv­en that a number of private HEIs perform better than SUCs.

“Also, the budgetary support for free tuition will be difficult to sustain,” the Cabinet officials said in their joint position.

The economic managers stressed that UniFAST’s other advantages over the across-the-board free tuition propos­al that include a clear delineation among its three modes of financial assistance in terms of objectives and target bene­ficiaries, applicability in both SUCs and private HEIs, a test-based eligibility re­quirement, and its adherence to the ac­ceptable standards of the Commission on Higher Education.