LEGAZPI CITY—Albayanos consider the pioneering free education program of their provincial government as one of their greatest legacies after it benefited 88,444 college scholars over the past nine years.
The program, the Albay Higher Education Contribution Scheme, is a study-now-pay-later scholarship program started in 2007, initially aimed at producing a college graduate for every Albayano family.
Its overwhelming success has inspired the province to raise its goal to at least one college and one technical-vocational graduate per family.
AHECS is the brainchild of Albay Gov. Joey Salceda, who completes his three terms as governor this June and will take over as representative of Albay’s second congressional district which gave him a 92 percent vote mandate in the May 9 elections.
He said the program will continue to leave its mark on every Albayano family who benefited from it and who will forever reap the fruits of its successes.
Having successfully tested the program in Albay, Salceda said he plans to make AHECS a model for a legislated National Higher Education Contribution System for private tertiary schools and state colleges and universities, which he plans to push in the next Congress.
AHECS takes the biggest chunk of the provincial budget. It was funded by a P700-million secured loan from Land Bank in 2010, and is hailed as among Albay’s more effective development strategies.
Patterned after the Australian scholarship program that beats the US educational system, AHECS had an initial enrollment of 34,000 Albayano students in 2007, which grew to 77,172 in 2012 and then to 88,444 in 2015.
Its beneficiaries are given a “free hand to choose their fields of study, minus the usual financial woes that hamstrung parents and students who desire to pursue college education.”
Salceda said most of his programs are predicated on the philosophy and value of “constant kindness, categorical imperative of fairness and equality, and the capacity to dream and be creative, while not forgetting humility.”
Albay goes on record as the country’s first and only province to have institutionalized its education program.
The program is administered by its Provincial Education Department, created by an Albay Provincial Board ordinance and duly approved by the Civil Service Commission, the Department of Education and the Department of Budget and Management.
AHECS has partnered with some 53 colleges and universities across Albay. At the Mariners’ Polytechnic Institute, the most popular school for seafarers in Southern Luzon, its beneficiary graduates from 2009 to 2015 have reached 3,247.
The total scholarship investments for them stand at P16,235,000. Many local government units in the country have visited Albay to study and replicate the AHECS model.