Around P51 billion will be needed to implement President Rodrigo Duterte’s Free Tuition Law within its first year of implementation, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said Wednesday as they proposed for a national entrance examination for aspiring enrollees in state universities and colleges.
“We, at the DBM, are proposing that a national entrance examination be administered to ensure merit-based admission to public Higher Education Institutions [HEIs],” Diokno said.
The move will be on top of the tightening admission and retention policies in HEIs, which is expected to further trim down the number of students enrolled in SUCs.
The amount for the free tuition bill will be much lower than DBM’s earlier appreciation of the bill at P100 billion, and higher than Malacanang’s P16 billion and the Commission on Higher Education’s P34.1 billion.
The Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (RA 10931), which was signed into law by President Duterte last Aug. 3, will cover 8 State Universities and Colleges in Metro Manila, 49 in the rest of Luzon, 26 in the Visayas, and 29 in Mindanao, as well as CHED-accredited Local Universities and Colleges and Tesda-run Technical Vocational Institutions.
The law will exempt all enrolled students from 2018 onwards from paying tuition, miscellaneous and other school fees such as registration fees, laboratory fees, among others, Diokno said.
Another component of the law is the Tertiary Education Subsidy which will provide allowance for books, school supplies, transportation, and miscellaneous personal expenses to select student beneficiaries.
Students who are members of the 4Ps-beneficiary households will be prioritized for the subsidy, while students who are not part of such households will be evaluated based on income.
Student loan options will also be made available for students from private universities. Funds for such loans will be sourced from CHED’s Study Now, Pay Later program which has an allocation of around P54 million in the proposed 2018 budget.
Other possible mechanisms to allow loan options in private HEIs were being discussed by CHED and DBM, such as entering into guarantees with government-owned banks such as the LandBank and DBP.