MANILA, Philippines – The government urged state universities and colleges yesterday to raise and use their own funds on top of the subsidy being given them by the government.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said with the government’s ballooning fiscal deficit situation, the government could not increase funding for SUCs as it had to prioritize funding for other pressing socio-economic needs.
While state subsidy will continue, Abad said SUCs should be able to practice their academic and fiscal independence better through income-generating activities such as lease of land and other beneficial partnerships, especially in the use of knowledge generated through research.
“If only our fiscal situation was better, we could provide additional support for SUCs. We ask for understanding that because our resources are lacking, we had to prioritize other more urgent needs, such as in basic education where more poor students will benefit,” he said.
Abad stressed that proposed funding for SUCs of P23.407 billion for 2011 was not a reduction from this year’s funding level.
While the 2010 budget allocates P23.845 billion for SUCs, P1 billion for maintenance expenditures and P1.8 billion for capital outlay are congressional initiatives.
These congressional initiatives were subjected by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to a conditional veto that these could not be released unless new revenue measures were enacted by Congress. These were also not included in the 2011 proposed budget, together with other non-recurring expenditures.
Abad, meanwhile, clarified that he was not pushing for tuition fee hikes for all SUCs.
“I did not say that. What I said was that SUCs should maximize the use the cash balances, generated from tuition fees and revenue generating projects and activities, that these are authorized to retain. They could also pursue other income-generating partnerships using their underutilized assets,” he said.
Abad said SUCs should productively use its available funds. “Right now, there is a total of P19.1 billion in cash balances by SUCs, or an average of P65.9 million per SUC, as of end 2009. Especially with our fiscal state, we want these SUCs to use their funds in productive ways, not just keep these in the bank,” he said.
“In addition, for 2011, the Higher Education Development Fund (HEDF) will have P750.8 million available to assist cash-strapped SUCs,” he added.
The HEDF – a continuing fund established under Republic Act No. 7722 using contributions from travel taxes, professional registration fees and lotto gross sales – has a balance that amounts to P2.12 billion as of June 2010.
The secretary stressed that this issue on the budget for SUCs just showed how urgent it was to pursue reforms in public higher education.
“Or else, government funding for SUCs will never be enough. Our funds provided to SUCs are spread out too thinly and without much impact, especially when it comes to providing training in disciplines most needed for sustainable economic development.”
“For one, there are 110 SUCs, many of which are not viable,” he said, adding that a possible direction for SUC reform would be through consolidation, having strong and focused centers of excellence and state university systems such as the University of the Philippines and the Mindanao State University, rather than hundreds of individual SUCs.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said the students should put things in the proper context and understand that the government would have to do some belt-tightening.
Valte said there was no need to take things to the extreme and that authorities would exercise maximum tolerance in dealing with rallies.
Valte said the government had explained a number of times that SUCs’ funds were not going back to the national treasury and could be used by these educational institutions for their needs and operations.