The new “development
fee,” the former CHEd director narrated, all started a few years ago when
some engineering schools found themselves unable to repay their World Bank
loans due to high interest rates, thus forcing their students pay a
"development fee."
Meanwhile, Ramirez
pointed out that schools are collecting various fees for expenses that
were supposed to be part of the school’s capital outlay and are already
covered in the basic tuition. “These fees are not only questionable, they
are superfluous. School owners are becoming more creative in inventing new
fees to justify their lust for profit,” she said.
Among the most absurd
fees that schools collect are the postal fee, insurance fee, Smart fee and
copier fee in AMA Computer University; power charge fee in Trinity
College; Power Plant development fee in Miriam College; Land
Infrastructure Maintenance and Acquisition Development fee in Baguio
Colleges Foundation; accreditation fee in Technological Institute of the
Philippines; and pre-registration fee in Aquinas University in Albay.
Regulation?
CHEd has its own
formula for solving the anomalous fees: Its new guidelines also put a cap
on unabated miscellaneous fee increases. Similar to tuition, the cap will
be based on the prevailing inflation rate. The country’s inflation rate
last April is pegged at 8.5 percent.
However, CMO No. 14
also stipulates that tuition and miscellaneous fee increases that are less
than or equivalent to the current inflation rate will not be subjected to
consultation. Only increases that exceed the prevailing year’s average
inflation rate shall require a consultation process.
NUSP’s Ramirez said
the CHEd memo will only legitimize yearly hikes in miscellaneous fees.
“School owners can automatically increase school fees of all sorts as long
as it’s within the range of the inflation rate,” she warned.
Under the new memo,
Ramirez said, school owners can legally increase miscellaneous fees for
every item without any restraint as long as it is less than or equivalent
to the country’s inflation rate.
“CHEd failed to
recognize that miscellaneous fees don’t come in one package but are
charged in separate items. Instead of regulating runaway school fee hikes,
the new CHEd memo is even more vulnerable to abuse by school owners,” she
said.
“Worse, CHEd has now
declared legal the collection of dubious fees such as energy, development
and insurance fees in its new guidelines,” Ramirez said.
“CHEd has also
included vague items such as fees for ‘related learning experience’ and
‘study tours,’ which have already been exposed as a scheme for some
teachers and school officials to earn money,” the NUSP leader said.
“Instead of abolishing exorbitant fees, it seems that CHEd is allowing
schools to collect more fees as the ‘other school fees’ definition in the
new guidelines is indefinitely ended by the word ‘et cetera’ (etc.).”
Miscellaneous fee hikes in SUCs
Meanwhile, Anak ng
Bayan Youth Party Vice President Raymond Palatino revealed that state
colleges and universities (SCUs) are confronted with a similar trend. He
said for the last years, SUCs experienced the biggest increases in tuition
and miscellaneous fees due to meager budget.
Palatino expressed
fears over CHEd’s new memorandum, saying the ambiguous provision on
miscellaneous fees in CMO No. 14 will lead to bigger hikes in
miscellaneous fees and the imposition of more exorbitant fees in SUCs.
“Since there is a
moratorium on tuition hikes this year in SUCs and there are huge cuts in
their budget, SUC administrators will likely increase miscellaneous fees
and impose new fees to compensate for the meager budget,” he said.
“In recent years, the
drastic shift away from public funding of colleges and toward private
funding of these institutions resulted in the biggest increases in tuition
and miscellaneous fee in public higher education institutions,
particularly SUCs,” he added.
PUP PROCESSING FEE INCREASES
Source: PUP Office of the University Registrar; Accounting Office |
FEES |
BEFORE |
NOW |
PERCENTAGE
INCREASE |
Late Payment
|
P10 |
100 |
900 % |
Diploma |
50 |
100 |
60 % |
Graduation Fee |
50 |
200 |
150 % |
Certification |
20 |
50 |
150 % |
Transcript of
Records (per page) |
10 (all pages) |
50 (per page) |
400 % |
Readmission |
25 |
50 |
100 % |
Scannable Form |
5 |
20 |
300 % |
Verification of
Grades |
5 |
50 |
700 % |
Accreditation
Per Unit |
5 |
12 |
140% |
PUP College
Entrance Test
(PUPCET) |
100 |
300 |
200 % |
Retrieval |
0 |
100 |
|
Change of
Curriculum |
0 |
100 |
|
Overload per
Subject |
0 |
20 |
|
Change of
Schedule |
0 |
20 |
|
Palatino also
revealed that some SUCs are collecting fees which are more expensive than
their basic tuition per unit.
He cited the
Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) as an example. PUP tuition
remains at P12 per unit or P252 for a student with a 21-unit full load.
However, the school administration imposed increases in processing fees
last school year. The biggest increase was for the fine for late
enrolment, from P10 to P100.
Originally, a
transcript of records (TOR) will cost a PUP student only P10. But with the
new rates, he or she will now have to shell out P50 for each page of the
TOR. On the other hand, a graduating student now has to pay P200 for
graduation fee from only P50 in 2003.
PUP also charged new
fees which include payments for shifting form, verification of grades per
subject, re-admission fee and change of subject/curriculum/schedule.
NUSP’s monitoring
meanwhile revealed that development fee is also being collected in some
SUCs like the University of
Northern Philippines in Vigan and
Samar
State Polytechnic College which collect
P200 for the fee.
Laboratory fees have
also been very profitable for SUC administrators. In five departments and
colleges in UP, laboratory fees have increased from 0-P50 to P500-P600.
Tuition in UP
graduate schools also increased in 2001, from P300 per unit to a maximum
of P700, a 66.67 to 400 percent hike.
“Unless the
government and CHED start to genuinely regulate miscellaneous fees, any
tuition hike moratorium will be useless as school administrators can
easily bloat other fees to rake in big profits,” he said.
Palatino also urged
CHEd to abolish exorbitant fees being charged in schools and penalize
schools which will continue to impose questionable fees on students.
Bulatlat
BACK TO
TOP ■
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION ■
COMMENT
© 2004 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided
its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.