STUDENTS from Northern Mindanao joined thousands of youths from all over the country in calling on the government to put a stop on the yearly increase of tuition and other school fees.
Some 20 students, mostly members of Kabataan Partylist-Northern Mindanao Region and the League of Filipino Students (LFS), held a protest action outside the Commission on Higher Education in region 10 (CHED-10) Friday afternoon to press for affordable college education.
“What we want is accessible education where everyone has the right to go to school,” said Vennel Francis Chenfoo, Kabataan partylist regional coordinator for Northern Mindanao.
But because of its inaction that has hindered students from going to colleges and universities, Chenfoo has challenged the CHED to investigate the increase in tuition and other school fees.
“We vehemently condemn the [CHED] for paving way the perennial increase of tuition fees in private institutions,” Kabataan said in a statement.
Among the 400 universities in the country, it said, which will increase its tuition is Xavier University, which is expected to raise its matriculation by five percent or P903 per unit from P860 per unit next school year.
Cagayan de Oro College, Kabataan added, will also be imposing the same rate of increase.
The group said, “this manifests with whom the CHED has been siding with – the profit of these private school owners.”
Kabataan has also condemned tertiary schools of collecting “development fee” and “cultural development fee” despite a Ched order, in its en banc resolution no. 221-2012 declaring them as illegal.
Some of the schools in the region that are still imposing these development fees, the group said, are Xavier University, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), Lourdes College, Mindanao University of Science and Technology, Bukidnon State University and Central Mindanao University.
In its March 11, 2016 letter to Dr. Zenaida Gersana, CHED-10 regional director, Kabataan said that aside from the development fees, some of these schools are also collecting what it called as “dubious fees” in the form of energy fee, internet fee, ICT development fee.
In a dialogue with the protesters Friday, Gersana said the students should have brought up these issues and concerns to the school management during pre-implementation consultations, but Rocha Mae Bihag, of the LFS, countered that their group was not even invited to these meetings.
Aljun Mejia, a second year BS-Psychology student at MSU-IIT, said although he is a dean’s lister whose privilege is akin to an academic scholar, he is still paying for miscellaneous fees.
Mejia said at MSU-IIT students can already feel the exorbitant fees of services, one of them the P100 per student internet fee which they don’t enjoy due to the slow connection.
Sadrach Cose, a freshman at Bukidnon State University taking up AB-Sociology, said their problem is on the increase in the tuition which the school collects during exams.
He said students are obliged to pay 30 percent during the preliminary exam, 40 percent during the midterm and 30 percent during the final exam while disallowing promissory note.
Cose also accused the school of implementing the “no permit, no exam” policy which runs counter to the CHED memorandum order 9-2013 disallowing this practice among educational institutions.