Over 200 schools file tuition hike petition

MANILA, Philippines — Over 200 private colleges and universities are seeking government approval to increase tuition and other fees this year due to the impact of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law and the migration of teachers to state-funded tertiary institutions.

In a press briefing yesterday, Commission on Higher Education (CHED) officer-in-charge J. Prospero de Vera said their regional offices have endorsed the applications for tuition and other fee increases of 248 private higher education institutions (HEIs).

The data do not include applications from Region 4-A, which are expected to be submitted to the commission next week before the board tackles the requests for increases.

“The regional offices have completed their work on evaluating the applications. There is no decision of the commission en banc yet but there are some preliminary data,” De Vera said.

“This number may go down depending on the decision of the commission en banc next week,” he added.

Of the 248 HEIs, 211 are asking for increase in both tuition and other school fees, 27 only on tuition and 10 only on other school fees.

Asked for reasons for the increase, De Vera said the HEIs cited the impact of the TRAIN law and the migration of faculty members to state-funded colleges and universities (SUCs) that offer better compensation.

“Some are saying (these are) effects of the TRAIN law,” he said. “Also, because cost of education has really gone higher. Remember, one of the problems being encountered by private universities now is they are losing their good faculty to SUCs.”

The CHED official noted that private schools have to be competitive in terms of salary for them not to lose teachers to the public sector.

“Private universities are losing a lot of their very good faculty because they cannot pay them competitive salaries. Tuition increases (are) the number one way of making the salaries competitive because 70 percent of any tuition fee increase must be given to salaries,” he said.

In addition to new faculty items in SUCs, he noted the Department of Education has created a lot of items for senior high school teachers, which offer higher compensation than some of the smaller private universities.

De Vera, however, stressed that the number of private HEIs seeking increases in tuition and other fees is just a small percentage of the over 1,600 private tertiary institutions nationwide.

“Majority of private universities are not increasing fees. It’s only a small percentage, only 14 percent of HEIs have applied for tuition increase,” he said. “The impact of this overall may not be as bad as speculated.”