CHED urges aspiring college students in Visayas to avail of education assistance

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) urged aspiring tertiary students in the Visayas to avail of the government’s education assistance programs.

Atty. Ryan Estevez, executive director of CHED’s Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST), made this call during the Mugstoria Ta, an online conversation with Assistant Secretary Anthony Gerard ‘Jonji’ Gonzales. Mugstoria Ta is aired on the Facebook page of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas.

“The government’s free tertiary education program is designed to give universal access to quality tertiary education para magkaroon lahat ng pagkakataon na makapag-aral,” Estevez said.

He explained that there are several programs under Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, which was signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017.

These are the free higher education, tertiary education subsidy (TES) and student loan program. Students can avail of the free higher education by enrolling in state universities and colleges (SUCs) or in CHED-recognized local universities and colleges (LUCs).

The Free Higher Education exempts students from paying tuition and 13 other school fees (admission, athletic, computer, cultural, development, entrance, guidance, handbook, laboratory, library, medical/dental, registration, and school ID fees).

Aspiring students can also take admissions/entrance exams of the said institutions for free, without any condition.

However, there are specialized fees or course-specific expenses (such as On-the-job-trainings, Related Learning Experiences for nursing students, etc.) as well as contingent fees (i.e. resulting from negative behavior) not covered by the law.

Under the free tertiary education program, there were 266,950 beneficiaries enrolled in SUCs and 38,922 enrolled in LUCs in the Visayas. The total tuition and other fees reached more than P1.968 billion.

However, the number of beneficiaries dropped slightly to 251,668 in the second semester or a total allocation of more than P1.675 billion, Estevez said.

He added that the government targets the same number of beneficiaries in the second semester.

Estevez said college students may also apply for CHED’s Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) “to support at least the partial cost of tertiary education, inclusive of education-related expenses.”

The TES is a government grants-in-aid program that gives P60,000 per school year to financially-needy students in private schools and those studying in private schools in municipalities and cities without public universities.

TES grantees enrolled in SUCs and LUCs will be reimbursed P40,000 while those enrolled in private higher education institutions will get P60,000 reimbursement. They will also receive one-time maximum reimbursement of P10,000 for licensure exams expenses.

Meanwhile, TES grantees with disabilities will also get an additional P30,000. For the first semester of academic year 2019-2020, there were 51,906 TES grantees in the Visayas with a total grant amount of over P1.069 billion, Estevez said.

For the second semester, there were 49,342 TES grantees with a total grant amount of more than P1.016 billion. According to Atty Estevez, 60 percent of total paid amount for TES grants was for those enrolled in private schools.

For those who did not qualify for free higher education and TES, they can avail of the student loan program (SLP). They can avail up to P60,000 per program cycle at zero interest if paid within the loan term.

In the Visayas, there are only 174 of the 270 loan applicants were qualified. Of these number, 77 are in Region VI, 93 in Region VII and only three in Region VIII, according to Estevez.

The total loan amount for the three regions under SLP reached P3.055-million, which is way below the P1-billion total SLP budget for the entire country.

Atty. Estevez expressed hope that the applicants for SLP from the Visayas will increase. He urged those interested to avail of the student assistance programs to visit the official UniFAST Facebook Page or official website at https://unifast.gov.ph/.

UniFAST reconciles, improves, strengthens, expands, and puts under one body all government-funded modalities of Student Financial Assistance Programs (StuFAPs) for tertiary education – and special purpose education assistance – in both public and private institutions.