Universities can increase tuition at will

COLLEGES and universities can increase their tuition as much as they want but should get the nod of students and their parents first, according to the Commission on Higher Education (Ched).

Under this condition, Ched Chairman Emmanuel Angeles on Tuesday said that the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) cannot implement its proposed 1,700-percent raise in tuition in select courses.

“We will check if there were proper consultations with parents, students, the faculty, members of the alumni and student bodies. If it [proposal] did not pass through consultations, it should not be implemented,” Angeles told ABS-CBN’s morning show ‘Umagang kay Ganda.’

He said that administrators of tertiary schools can propose or implement tuition increases by as much as 1,700 percent or more because the government is yet to set a ceiling on tuition raises.

According to the Ched chairman, student activists at PUP seemed to have overreacted to the tuition-hike issue by throwing chairs and tables during their protests inside the university’s main campus in Santa Mesa, Manila.

Angeles said that the PUP administration can ask the students to pay for the broken chairs and tables or slap penalties on them.

Chaser Soriano, the incoming PUP Central Student Council president, said that a dialogue between student representatives and PUP President Dante Guevarra on Monday failed.

Soriano added that they realized that the PUP president was “not keen” on suspending the tuition increase.

He said that Guevarra, during the dialogue, even included the issue of the next PUP Board of Regents meeting on March 29 to speed up the proposal’s approval.

The tuition hike, Soriano added, was originally not included in the agenda of the board meeting. The 11-member board, which includes a student regent, will decide if the tuition increase will push through or not.

Prior to the dialogue, Dr. Divina Pasumbal of the PUP Media Affairs Office said that only science, engineering and other select degree programs will be affected by the tuition raise.

PUP officials said that the national government should be the one to blame for the big tuition increase because of budget cuts the state university faced. –FRANCIS A. CUETO Reporter, Manila Times