Students say CHEd’s tuition policy biased for “capitalist-educators”

Press Release
January 24, 2008

The League of Filipino Students (LFS) today said that the Commision on Higher Education’s (CHEd) current tuition policy favors “profit-greedy school owners” and is “biased against students and parents.”

CHEd, with the approval of Malacanang, recently reversed its policy of imposing a cap on tuition increases and re-implemented CHEd Memorandum Order 13, which outlined the guidelines on tuition increases which the Commission has started implementing in 1998.

The CHED imposes its guidelines on tuition and other fees in private schools through memorandum orders or CMOs.

According to Vencer Crisostomo, LFS National Chairperson, the revival of the old memo “ignores the fact that students and parents have been complaining of skyrocketing and unjust tuition increases since 1998 and the ridiculously high cost of tertiary education.”

Crisostomo explained that the government’s “flawed deregulatory policy” was to blame for the unreasonable tuition rates in most private tertiary schools and which have resulted to a falling rate of college education accessibility.

The youth leader enumerated the flaws in CMO 13 primary of which was the lack of a tuition ceiling which used to be pegged at the inflation rate through the suspended CMO 14 and its amendments through CMO 42.

Crisostomo added that the said policy does not cover other fees apart from tuition and so private schools are given the freedom to “invent” new fees and increase existing others which he described as “exorbitant.”

“The amended CMO 14 provided that new fees and miscellaneous fees should be consulted to the students first before they can be imposed by schools. With the re-implementation of CMO 13, school owners can impose new, and at times absurd, fees without even listening to the opinion of the students and the parents,” said Crisostomo.

The LFS, along with other groups warned that they shall be holding big protest demonstrations, class walk-outs and boycotts in the following weeks as tuition consultations this February approaches.

“We ask CHEd to heed student demands for a freeze on tuition hikes, unless they want to see more and more students marching towards their offices on the weeks to come,” said Crisostomo.###

Reference:

Ron Villegas, Vice Chairperson and Information Officer, 09154943120, ronvil@gmail.com

Vencer Crisostomo, National Chairperson, 09157991059, 09228262606, venzie@gmail.com