Public HEIs asked to move school opening

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has urged public higher education institutions (HEIs) to adjust their academic calendars and synchronize their schedules with the fiscal year.

Starting next school year, all state and local colleges and universities (SUCs/LUCs) will begin the second semester every January rather than on the last quarter of the year, CHED chairman J. Prospero de Vera III told The STAR last Saturday.

The adjustment would mean opening the first semester in August instead of June for public tertiary institutions that have yet to implement the previously optional academic calendar shift.

De Vera on April 5 issued a memorandum for CHED regional officials and heads of SUCs and LUCs enjoining them to implement the changes in the coming school year.

The boards of regents of the HEIs will still have to approve the academic calendar shift before it can be implemented.

De Vera said the shift would ensure that all HEIs are synchronized with the next fiscal year when it begins in January 2020.

He said the directive was due to the government’s push for cash-based budgeting, which would require agencies to spend all their allotted funds by the end of every fiscal year.

“It looks like cash-based budgeting can’t be done in 2019 because the General Appropriations Act is still not signed (by the President), so it gives SUCs one year to practice for the 2020 cash-based budgeting,” he added.

Earlier, De Vera said the cash-based budgeting scheme would be difficult to implement in CHED due to the varying academic calendars of the HEIs.

For instance, he cited challenges in reimbursing schools for the free higher education policy as requests filed at the end of the year could either be for first or second semester enrollment.

With the academic calendar synchronized with the fiscal year, De Vera said managing the funds would be less complicated for the agency as requests from schools will cover the same period.

De Vera said all SUCs in Regions 6 and 7 have already agreed to change their academic calendars.

The calendar shift was first implemented by the University of the Philippines in 2014 when De Vera was its vice president for public affairs.

Other HEIs have since followed suit, including Ateneo de Manila University and University of Santo Tomas.