THE Commission on Higher Education yesterday launched a research study on student admission and retention in state universities and colleges in the country.
CHED Chairperson Prospero De Vera said there is a need to assess the admission and retention rate amid the increased access to tertiary education brought by the 2017 law on free tuition in state universities and colleges.
“As more and more students take the admission test in our public universities, the admission system becomes more and more competitive. Clearly, we should be concerned with the issue of equity in higher education,” De Vera told reporters in a press briefing.
“We must be concerned that if our admission system is not examined, there is a possibility as what happens in other countries that those who are less prepared to go to university, those coming from public schools, those coming from rural areas, the children of indigenous communities, are going to get marginalized and they won’t be able to enter universities,” he added.
He said they have commissioned the Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University, University of Southern Mindanao and Samar State University to conduct the study.
The study would initially focus on several state universities and colleges in the Ilocos region, Soccsksargen, and Eastern Visayas.
“We wanted to find out who are taking the admission exams, their socio-economic profiles and who among them gets admitted to our SUCs,” De Vera explained.
“Once we find out that the admission system disproportionately disadvantages certain sectors, the CHED-commissioned study will now direct universities about the options that they can take to improve their admission system so more people from public schools, from rural areas, children of indigenous communities, children of rebel returnees will able to get in,” De Vera explained.
Last year, De Vera defended the free tuition policy in SUCs, saying it is part of the government’s responsibility to do so to ensure that those coming from poor families would be able to get the tertiary education they need.
However, he said he had no quarrel with amending Republic Act 10931, also known as the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act signed by then President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017 to provide underprivileged students the chance to pursue tertiary education through free tuition and exemption of other fees in state universities and colleges.
“I welcome the opportunity to review the Free Higher Education Act since it has been six years since its implementation and there is enough data on the ground to make policy decisions,’ he said.
However, De Vera said he does not agree with the argument that RA 10931 is a waste of government resources.
At the same time, De Vera said it is not correct to say that the SUCs should be stringent in accepting students as all of them already have entrance examinations.
“All of our SUCs have entrance tests but the problem lies with their limited capacity to accept students,” he added.
De Vera cited the University of the Philippines where more than 100,000 graduating high school students take the UP College Admission Test annually but only around 14,000 are accepted.
He said this is also happening at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines wherein only 15 to 20 percent of those who take the entrance test are accepted due to limited absorption capacity.
Nationwide, De Vera said, SUCs accept only around 50 percent of those who took the respective entrance examinations.
Since the implementation of RA 10931, De Vera said the participation rate (the number of college-age Filipinos who are going to tertiary education) has increased from 32 percent to the present 41 percent.
Data from CHED showed that there are 1.97 million students enrolled in 197 higher education institutions (114 SUCs and local universities and colleges) who are beneficiaries of the free tuition program under the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education and another 364,168 who received subsidies through the government’s Tulong Dunong program and the Tertiary Education Subsidy in the academic year 2021-2022.
