DAVAO CITY—Despite having been granted permission by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to raise tuition fees, private colleges and universities in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) will not be increasing their tuition rate.
Amor Pendaliday, CHEd-ARMM chief, said private educational institutions operating in the region had agreed that implementing tuition increases would discourage more parents from sending their children to school.
The CHEd recently gave 313 universities and colleges permission to increase tuition by an average of 6.17 percent or about P29.86 per unit. For other school fees, CHEd declared an average increase of 6.55 percent or about P135.60.
“Academic institutions in the ARMM preferred not to increase their tuition because they want the parents in our region to send their children to college,” Pendaliday said.
ARMM is among the country’s poorest regions. The National Statistical Coordination Board has reported that 47 out of 100 families in the five-province region were poor or more than twice the national figure of 22.
ARMM has about 51 private schools catering to students that its 15 state universities and colleges could not take in.
Big relief
Second year college student Sittie Aisha Tawal from the Mindanao State University-Dalican Campus in Maguindanao said the CHEd’s announcement was a big relief for her parents.
Even if MSU is a government-operated institution, nonscholars still had to pay to get education.
“We are glad that we don’t have a tuition increase, it is good news for us, especially to our parents,” Tawal said.
Kabataan party-list has said the “new spate of fee hikes will result in additional burdens to students and their families.”
“CHEd chair Patricia Licuanan sounded apologetic in her pronouncement that 313 higher education institutions will again increase tuition and other school fees this academic year. Yet no amount of apology can dilute the fact that CHEd has once again betrayed its constitutional mandate to ensure the affordability and accessibility of education,” Kabataan Rep. Terry Ridon said in a statement.
Ridon said the manner of presenting the tuition hikes using averages and the equivalent increase per unit was misleading.
“The data presented by CHEd is highly misleading, as the commission only shows us the values as expressed in absolute averages. By presenting the data in this manner, schools with high tuition and other fee increases can hide among schools that charge less. The truth of the matter is that there are many private HEIs that charge well over P80,000 per semester in tuition and other school fees,” Ridon said.
“CHEd did not even include in its presentation of data how much private HEIs are earning. In so many ways, CHEd is trying to play with figures to justify the unjustifiable,” he added.
Ridon said despite CHEd’s pronouncements that it was taking a holistic approach in approving tuition hikes, it has allowed them to continue “raking in billions in profit.”
“Tuition and other school fee increases can never be justified, no matter how. This new wave of tuition and other school fee increases again proves that the Aquino administration does not really want to provide affordable and accessible education,” Ridon said. RC