Do not shortchange SUCs

By Herman M. Lagon

A budget can look perfectly healthy from several thousand feet above. PHP 141 billion is, after all, the kind of number most of us cannot picture without a calculator and perhaps a mild headache. Come down to campus level, however, and the arithmetic becomes easier to understand. It becomes a laboratory instrument that still needs replacing, a classroom waiting for repair, an aging computer expected to survive another batch of students, a research proposal looking for funding, or a student service trying to accommodate more young people with roughly the same resources. This is why the debate over the proposed 2027 budget for State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) deserves more than competing headlines about whether there is, technically, a “cut.”

ACT is raising concern over proposed budget cuts affecting 49 SUCs, totaling PHP 3.34 billion. UP would take the biggest hit at nearly PHP 2.95 billion, with PNU and PUP also facing sizable reductions. That is hard to ignore. These are not obscure institutions asking for decorative extras. They educate teachers, engineers, scientists, health professionals, public servants, and thousands of young people whose families could hardly afford private higher education.

There is, however, another side to the arithmetic, and fairness requires mentioning it. The DBM says total SUC funding actually increases when the comparison is made NEP to NEP: from PHP 134.991 billion in the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP) to PHP 141.090 billion proposed for 2027, an increase of PHP 6.099 billion or 4.5 percent. DBM acknowledges that the 2027 proposal is about PHP 2.979 billion below the enacted 2026 General Appropriations Act, but attributes much of the difference to nonrecurring expenditures, including research projects and Congress-initiated locally funded projects. Both figures can therefore be true depending on what years and budget stages are being compared. Welcome to government budgeting, where even subtraction occasionally needs a footnote.

Still, I find the more important question is not whether we can win an argument over which column of the spreadsheet to use. Are we giving SUCs enough to do what the country keeps asking them to do? I ask this not only as an educator observing national policy from a distance. I am also a professor in a state university, and I have seen firsthand how much more our public colleges need, not how much excess they have.

The shortage is not always obvious. I see it in equipment that must wait, research competing for limited funds, outdated technology, and programs trying to serve more students with the same resources. Not every request should be funded, and every peso must be accounted for. But inside a state university, there is no shortage of worthwhile needs.

Free tuition does not mean educating students costs nothing. Someone still pays for the microscope, computer, laboratory supplies, internet, research access, counseling services, and faculty training. Removing tuition is important, but quality education still has a price.

CHED Chairperson Shirley Agrupis has acknowledged this reality: SUCs ask based on their needs but do not always receive what they request. She warned that limited resources could affect facilities and digital transformation. As Rep. Jude Acidre reminded lawmakers, quality higher education requires adequate resources.

The issue becomes more uncomfortable when viewed alongside the rest of the proposed national budget. Education is not alone in facing pressure. Figures raised during budget discussions show proposed reductions affecting basic education, CHED, TESDA, health, and other social programs, while the country’s infrastructure allocation is proposed at PHP 1.47 trillion, a 13-percent increase. DPWH alone is listed at PHP 644 billion, up 21 percent, partly because of the restoration of the flood-management program.

That does not make infrastructure the enemy. We need good roads, reliable bridges and transport, working ports, and flood-control projects that actually keep communities dry. A growing country needs concrete and steel. The problem comes when we behave as though human development and physical development can be placed on opposite ends of a seesaw. Infrastructure builds the places through which a country moves. Education develops the people who decide where it goes. We need both, and taxpayers deserve competence and accountability from both.

SUCs are no longer expected simply to teach and graduate students. We ask them to research, innovate, help communities, work with industries, go digital, and meet ever-higher standards. Yet UP’s research allocation could drop from PHP 1.76 billion to about PHP 830 million. Innovation, unfortunately, does not run on good intentions.

That does not mean giving universities a blank check. They, too, must fix delays, plan better, and make every peso count. More funding should mean greater accountability. But accountability cannot make up for resources that simply are not there.

There are encouraging parts of the proposal. DBM says funding for Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education in SUCs would increase by PHP 1.30 billion, or five percent, partly in response to growing enrollment. That deserves acknowledgment. Yet access is only half the promise. Opening the university gate to more students while classrooms, laboratories, faculty complements, digital systems, and student services struggle to keep pace risks confusing access to college with access to quality college education.

Congress should look beyond restoring numbers and ask what was cut, why, and what students and universities stand to lose. A completed building or finished project may explain some reductions. But cuts affecting research, laboratories, faculty development, student services, and extension deserve a closer look. The 2027 budget is still a proposal, so there is time to get these choices right.

After years in education, I have learned that some of its best investments are hardly visible. There are no ribbon-cuttings for better research access, working laboratory equipment, a counseling session that keeps a student in school, or an extension worker helping a coastal community. Yet these quiet investments are often what make a university matter.

So the debate should go beyond whether SUCs technically gained or lost a few billion pesos. The bigger question is what kind of public universities we want years from now. If we expect excellent graduates, useful research, stronger communities, and opportunities for students regardless of income, simply maintaining what we have may no longer be enough.

Sometimes progress costs more. Education usually does. For our SUCs, the wiser direction is not simply to avoid cutting. It is to invest better, spend better, demand better — and fund what we genuinely expect them to become.

Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit