252 schools to hike tuition fees by 20%

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) said that 20 percent or 252 out of the country’s 1,280 colleges and universities will increase their tuition fees this school year.

Dr. Roger Perez, CHED director, said that the average tuition increase was about 12 percent, which he said was slightly higher than last year’s increase of 10 percent on the average.

Perez, however, commented that the number of schools which will increase their tuition fees was fewer than expected.

The deadline of submission of application for tuition increase lapsed yesterday.

Perez explained that although colleges and universities are prescribed by law to submit their application for tuition fee hikes, CHED does not have any power to stop schools from raising their rates.

He explained that the education industry was deregulated with the passage of Batas 232 of 1982 or the Educational Services Act, which gave school authorities the decision to set tuition without government intervention.

With this development, the League of Filipino Students (LFS) and the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) have declared that national mass actions will be staged next week to protest the new round of tuition hikes.

Apolinario Alvarez, LFS Youth Party national president, said that the protest action will be used by students to express their opposition and indignation at the new round of increase in tuition fees.

"The CHED has no basis for allowing private schools and institutions to another round of increase. To implement tuition and other school fee increases especially in times of economic crisis is unreasonable," Alvarez said in an LFS statement.

"The number of enrollees continuously depreciate every year because tuition fee increase is a clear deprivation to the Filipino youth’s right to education," Alvarez said.