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Free education
INVESTING in the higher education of our youth benefits not only the individual but the entire country. Higher education has an indispensable role to play in gathering and transmitting the collective resources of human capability, human reasoning and human purposefulness to create a humane and prosperous society.
Parents and students welcome President Rodrigo Duterteâs signing of the Free Higher Education Act. The law will implement non-collection of tuition and miscellaneous fees for all state universities and colleges (SUCs) and local universities and colleges (LUCs). It will expand the access of the Filipino youth to higher education.
The President should be commended for going against the position of his economic managers. During the House of Representativesâ budget hearing, Department of Budget and Management secretary Benjamin Diokno and National Economic and Development Authority director general Ernesto Pernia said the government could not afford to finance free education in the tertiary level, that this proposal would only benefit the individual and not the country, and this would be detrimental to private colleges and universities. It seems that these two economic managers are not working for the government; they are acting as spokespersons for the private education businessmen.
Based from the data submitted by the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges to the Senate Committee on Education, 77 percent of the students in the SUCs are from the families of minimum-wage earners and below. This data show that majority of the students are struggling daily to support expenses needed in their studies and that imposition / collection of fees (tuition and miscellaneous) may further erode their hope to finish college education. Many of these students tend to be only part-time students as they should work to help their families to finance their studies.
We want to help our students focus on their studies so they can develop fully their potentials and achieve holistic development and the Free Higher Education Act will help us towards this end. Still, we call on all students, parents and teachers to be watchful and ensure that the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the law will not twist the intent of the law.
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