The Rise of Tuition Fee in Universities and Colleges in the Philippines

Everyone has the right to an education, though in recent years, there has
been a steady increase in its cost. Attaining a college level education has now
become a problem for most Filipinos. The cost of education now increases faster
than how much an average Filipino citizen earns (Lorenciana, 2015). As a result,
multiple students, who can no longer afford the cost of education, have been
dropping out. This raises the question: Is education really a right or has it now
become a privilege?.

For the academic year 2015-2016, around 400 universities and colleges in
the Philippines sought the approval of the government to allow them to increase
their tuition fees (nusp.org,2015). Out of these 400 schools, the Commission of
Higher Education or CHEd had approved the tuition fee increase of 313 schools
(Theodoro, 2015). CHEd has argued that these increases would be used for further
improvements of the school, yet a number of student leaders from different
schools have conducted protests against the increase in tuition fee. They have
stated that the skyrocketing tuition increase under the guise of development
further prevents students to access quality education (Elago, 2015).

With the implementation of the K to 12 education alone, which adds two

more years to the current education system in the Philippines, an estimate of 1
million students will drop out (Mateo, 2015). Rising fees will certainly force
students, from depressed and remote areas of the country, to give up their dream
of getting a college diploma (Cerramon, 2008).According to Vancer Chrisostomo,
the akbayan national chair, currently only 20 percent of those who enter college
are able to graduate. This new round of increases would only further burden the
parents and that the increase could not be deemed reasonable, as the salaries
of parents have not been increasing at all (Yees, 2014).

In a nutshell, it has been said multiple times that education is the key to a
bright future. Sonia Gadhi once said that a society and a country will only progress
once the maximum number of people are educated but during the past years, more
and more students drop out of school because they can no longer afford the cost of
education. Many people real as though there is not a price tag on education, which
is suppose to be a basic right for all, and is not exclusive to only those who can pay
(Gonzalez, 2015).