More Loopholes in New CHEd Memo, Youth Group Says : QC IMC

Hounded by persistent protests by both students and parents, the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) has finally flexed its muscle on runaway school fee increases. Under the new CHED Memorandum Order (CMO) No. 14, other school fees and new charges are now included in the guidelines to be observed by tertiary schools applying for fee hikes.

But Anak ng Bayan Youth Party Spokesperson Carl Marc Ramota said the new CHEd memo is more of a problem than a solution. “At first glance, CHEd’s memo appears to make the commission now on its toes regulating excessive increases and imposition of miscellaneous fees. The new guidelines’ very provisions tell us otherwise, however.”

The youth group, together with the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) earlier said the new order will only legitimize yearly tuition increases.

CMO No. 14 stipulates that tuition increases that are less than or equivalent to the current inflation rate will not be subjected to consultation. Only increases that exceed the prevailing year’s average inflation rate shall require a “consultation process.”

“Unfortunately, CHEd is seeing tuition hikes as an inevitable process or a natural phenomenon. Such framework serves CHEd’s long-held axiom that quality education comes with an expensive price tag,” Ramota pointed out.

He said CHEd is flaunting the “low” average annual increase in tuition in the last five years which ranged from 10-12 percent. “But how do we say that a tuition hike is justified? Even a one-percent hike does not make the tuition increase reasonable, especially if in the previous years, a school has already amassed millions in profit due to overcharging.”

In 2003, nine top earning schools had a combined profit amounting to P1.13 billion.

Bogus Consultations
As a regulatory measure, CHED has included more requirements for tuition increase application. School intending to increase tuition must submit a Certificate of Compliance that previous year’s incremental proceeds from tuition increase were used for personnel services and improvement of facilities and a Certificate of Agreement in the application of new fees to signify that new school charges were initiated and agreed upon by students.

However, Ramota said such documents can be easily fabricated to justify the proposed new increases. “The new memo does not provide any measure that will delve deeper into these reports and tuition increases in the previous years prior to the new CMO. Since CHEd’s creation, we have yet to hear of a school penalized by Commission for violating its guidelines and for illegally tuition hike.”

He said student representatives’ experiences prove that these consultations for tuition increase application are for mere information dissemination only.

“Tuition hikes are imposed despite student protest, as in the case of the University of the East in Recto and Caloocan campuses,” Ramota revealed. NUSP reports reveal that despite a deadlock in the consultations, the UE administration has invented an arbitration process to enforce a tuition hike. This process can never be found in the old CHEd memorandum on the conduct of consultations for tuition increases. Based on the previous memo, the CHEd Regional Office shall resolve any deadlock in consultations.

“Since the consultation process remains the same, we could expect such practices to continue,” he said.

CHEd however has another solution. The Commission created the Task Force on Tuition and Other School Fees at the Regional Level which shall serve as a recommendatory body for all complaints and disputes forwarded by the CHEd Regional Offices (CHEDRO).

“But the composition of the Task Force gives us a clear picture of the ‘recommendations’ it will be issuing in the future,” he pointed out. The body has nine members - four of which are schools or school owners’ associations; three are government officials; a faculty union representative; and a student representative, which will still be designated by the National Youth Commission.

Furthermore, CMO No. 14 stipulates that if the CHEDRO, in the initial level and the Task Force failed to act within 30 days from receipt of the application and cases elevated to them, the intended increase will be automatically implemented. “This makes any complaint futile as CHEd will approve their application for tuition hikes anyway.”

More Absurd Fees
The new guidelines have also included miscellaneous fee increases and new school charges in its scope.

But instead of regulating miscellaneous fees, Ramota said CHED’s new memo further encourages school owners to hike school fees. Similar to tuition, school owners can also automatically increase school fees of all sorts equivalent or less than the inflation rate without any restriction.

He said the Commission also failed to recognize that miscellaneous fees don’t come in one package but are charged in separate items.

“Worse, CHEd has now declared legal the collection of dubious fees such as energy, development and insurance fees in its new guidelines. It included vague items such as fees for ‘related learning experience’ and ‘study tours,’ which have already been exposed as a scheme for some teachers and school officials to earn money,” Ramota said.

It was only last year when former CHEd Executive Director Roger Perez admitted in an interview with this newspaper that most tertiary schools are charging students with various fees that are “downright ridiculous,” citing energy fee, guidance and counseling fee, aircon fee, social action fee and building fee as examples.

But the worst, according to Perez, is the development fee, which he said, “can never be explained.”

“Instead of abolishing exorbitant fees, it seems that CHEd is allowing schools to collect more fees as the ‘other school fees’ definition in the new guidelines is indefinitely ended by the word ‘et cetera’ (etc.),” Ramota added.

The ambiguous provision on miscellaneous fees in CMO No. 14 may also lead to bigger hikes in miscellaneous fees and the imposition of more exorbitant fees in SUCs, he predicted.

“Since there is a moratorium on tuition hikes this year in SUCs and there are huge cuts in their budget, SUC administrators will likely increase miscellaneous fees and impose new fees to compensate for the meager budget.”

Ramota warned that the new measure is more vulnerable to school owners' abuse, especially with a CHEd that can be easily dictated by private school owners associations.

“Besides, the release of the new memo could have never been more untimely as enrollment period in most schools is almost over,” pointed out.

Ramota said that CHEd’s new memo does not addressing the rising cost of education. He instead urged CHEd to lead the campaign to scrap Section 42 of the Education Act of 1982 which is the legal basis of the policy on tuition deregulation.

“Even the Commission admits in its publication CHED Prism in 1996 that ‘unless BP 232 (Education Act of 1982) is repealed or amended, the most viable course for all concerned is to take a close look at where the increases are going,” he said.