In compliance with the Constitutional provision mandating the State to “protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality education at all levels and to “take appropriate steps to make such education accessible to all,” Congress recently passed a law granting this country’s students tuition-free education at all State-owned universities and colleges (SUC).
Like all acts that involve the granting of privileges on a free basis to millions of recipients, the approval of the law as greeted with skepticism, even disbelief, in many quarters. Chief among these were the committees of budget experts and economic planners.
The budget experts’ skepticism arise from the fact that the given of the tuition-free tertiary education privilege was the government of this country, which is hard-pressed to locate resources sufficient to finance the proposed P3.76 trillion national budget from 2018. With many crucial section demanding stepped-up government spending—including transportation, communication and agriculture—budget experts within and outside the government have been at a loss to determine where the estimated P19.8 billion needed for tuition-free SUC education will be coming from. Their unease has been heightened by the presentation to Congress of a Dutere administration tax package calling for an income tax revenue loss of around P139 billion.
Will the proposed 2018 budget be able to accommodate the tuition-fee SUC education program? The program’s supporters in the Executive Department and in Congress insist that it can. The budget experts have their doubts.
The economic planners’ unease on the other hand, relates not to the sourcing of the funds for the financing of Congress’s tuition-free SUC education but to the efficiency in the use of funds. They are agreed on the will to raise the enrollment rate among the lowest 20 percent of college-age Filipino, but they disagree on the most efficient use of whatever resources are made available for tuition-free, which are the object of in mind that tuition fees, which are the object of Congress’s generous gesture account for only around one-third of the total cost of tertiary education, rather than the grant of free tuition, is the best approach to the widest possible spreading of tertiary-education opportunities in the country. Other economists are convinced that grants-in-aid are a better way of going poor college-age Filipinos a chance at a decent college education. Still other economists look at a program of affordable student loans as the best approach of all. There, also, are those who favor a combination of free tuition and one of the other facilities.
The superiority or inferiority of the financing option chosen can be debated upon, but certain guidelines need to be observed if optional results are to be denied from the public funds employed for providing educational opportunities for this country’s poor college-age students.
The first guideline has to be merit. Any program seeking to benefit a very large number of people with limited resources must ensure that only deserving individuals get to enjoy the benefit. A program such as the tuition-free SUC education must target poor and deserving, not just poor, students. Thus, only students who pass as possible the qualifying examination should be allowed to avail of the tuition-free SUC program. Students who dropout because of inability to stay the course will be a waste of resources that are scarce.
A second guidelines that needs to be served in the implementation of the tuition-free SUC education program is the student’s capacity to bear all or most of the cost of his tertiary education. The law passed by Congress, being general in scope, will encompass poor and affluent college-age students alike. Would-be beneficiaries of the program must undergo a measures test similar to the test administered by the University of the Philippines in connection with it socialized tuition program. Hard-earned taxpayers’ money must not be spent on college-age students who worry about not being able to find parking space for their vehicles.
A third guidelines relates to a situation that should not materialize his, given the experience of numerous government programs of the same kind very well could again. I refer to program that failed because a program was funded insufficiently or on only a short-term basis. The danger in the case of the tuition-free SUC education is that students will be forced to discontinue their SUC studies because of inability to finance the other-than-tuition costs of a college education, given that the tuition fee represents only around a third of the total cost of such education. Waste of public resources would again ensure.
A final guideline for the successful implementation of the tuition-free SUC education program relates to a structural problem that has long loser Philippine economic development. That problem is the continuing mismatch between the output of this country’s educational system and the technological requirements of its production sector. Stated simply, the Philippine educational system is not turning out all the engineers, mathematicians and engineers needed by the Philippine industries and the approval of the tuition-free SUC education program is a perfect opportunity to correct this state of affairs. A committee embodying representation from the four prevailing concerned government entities—the Commission on Higher Education, the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Budget and Management—should be created to undertake this task.
Poor Filipinos students should be given every opportunity to receive tertiary, but the government must go about it in a way that yields maximum benefit to Philippine socio-economic development.
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