EDITORIAL
For how long will a freebie last?
Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno has identified inefficient
and wasteful programs of the government. During the
deliberation of the 2024 national budget at the Senate, he
specifically called for the review of the “Universal Access to
Quality Tertiary Education Act” (R.A. No. 10931). He describes
the law as “anti-poor” because of the increase in families from
higher-income groups that took advantage of the program due to
the absence of income requirements.
The program is one of the landmark legislations passed into
law under the Duterte administration entitled The Unified
Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education Act, or UniFAST
— also known as Republic Act No. 10687.
The UniFAST was fully implemented in 2018, which the
government has allocated a budget of PHP40 billion for the school
year 2018-2019 — PHP16 billion for Free Higher Education,
another PHP16 billion for the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) for
needy students, PHP7 billion for Technical-Vocational Education
and Training (TVET), PHP1 billion for the Student Loan Program.
Starting the school year 2018-2019, around 1.3 million students
did not pay their tuition and miscellaneous fees.
(www.pna.gov.ph)
The government released a PHP16 billion fund for the
Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) that year. TES is given to poor
but deserving students enrolled in the 112 SUCs and 78 LUCs
whose names appear in the Listahanan 2.0 or the Pantawid
Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) list of the Department of Social
Welfare and Development (DSWD). The UniFast involves huge
budgetary amounts per year.
The UniFAST could have been one of the reasons for the
establishment of local colleges, even in fifth-class municipalities,
since the students enrolled are subsidized under this program.
In August, 2022, Senator Risa Hontiveros accused the
Commission on Higher Education of mismanaging the funds after
the Commission on Audit (COA) flagged almost P7 billion worth of
‘questionable releases’ under the Commission on Higher
Education (CHED) scholarship agency.
It has been the consistent stand of The Bohol Tribune that
the program is unsustainable if the current policy of no income
requirement continues to be implemented.
As early as 2017, economic managers aired their opposition
to free tuition in state universities and colleges (SUCs), which,
they said, would be unsustainable and disruptive to the education
market.
As it stands now, lawmakers are not keen on listening to the
professional opinion of economic experts since supporting the
abolition or rationalizing the program could be political suicide as
they will lose the votes of students and parents unfavorably
affected by a rationalized free college program.
Lawmakers must then choose between the sustainability of
the program or their perpetuation of power. In all probability,
they would choose the latter. This means more taxes to be
exacted from the taxpayers, or the country shall forever be
entangled in a debt trap.