Budget should be used to stop fee hikes-youth solon

KABATAAN Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino slammed the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for failing to regulate tuition as the House tackled the agency’s proposed 2010 budget in session today, citing that higher education institutions impose higher tuition rates year after year.

Data from CHED show that the average tuition rate per unit in schools went up from 312.80 in 2002 to 416.57 in 2008. “This only shows the agency’s inutility and inaction amid decreasing access to education,” the young solon said.

Palatino said that the agency’s failure to regulate tuition springs from ineffective policies that through the years have been implemented in favor of school owners.

“CHED is mandated to ensure the quality and affordability of tertiary education in the country but it has become nothing but a middle man for business interests of profit-oriented school owners at the expense of students when tuition regulation is concerned,” he said.

Palatino cited CHED Memorandum Order 13, which provides the existing guidelines for tuition increases. He said that schoolowners have favored CMO 13 through the years because its scope does not include miscellaneous fees and it is “toothless” in facilitating tuition increase consultations.

The solon also said that as long as CHED continues to prioritize business interests over students’ welfate, any allocation for CHED in aid of monitoring and regulating tuition increases will just go to waste. “As we see it, lack of budget is not the reason for CHED’s ‘powerlessness’ to regulate tuition but lack of political will and conflict of interest,” he said.

Moreover, Palatino pointed out that in the last committee hearing, it was proposed to increase the budget of CHED by P5 billion. The bulk of this will purpotedly go to scholarships for students and teachers.

“This is well and good. But what is the use of increased budget in scholarships when tuition fees increase at unprecedented levels? Our efforts to increase scholarship funds will only be futile if we easily allow HEIs to keep increasing fees every year.” he said.

Palatino said that for CHED to be worthy of its budget, it should impose a moratorium on tuiton increases.

“CHED should instead thoroughly check and validate where yearly tuition and other fee increases are being alloted. Schoolowners always attest that revenue from fee hikes go to improvement of school services and facilities, yet CHED itself noted that among the 1,741 private and public HEIs in the country, only 50 schools have ‘good’ facilities,” he said. ###