4 in 10 students dropping out of college despite free tuition —EDCOM

Four out of ten Filipino college students fail to finish their degrees despite the government’s free tuition program, according to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II).

In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), attrition is as high as 93%, while dropout rates in Metro Manila and Central Visayas hover at 52% and 61%, respectively.

According to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the top reasons for leaving college are the need to work (44%), lack of engagement (25%), and financial struggles (20%).

“Kung ang lahat ng college programs po natin, eight to five lamang… marami po talaga baka hindi kayang pagsabayin ang pag-aaral at pagtatrabaho,” EDCOM II Executive Director Dr. Karol Mark Yee said, noting that many students cannot balance full-time class schedules with the need to earn a living.

(If all our college programs were only eight to five… many people might not be able to combine studying and working.)

Lawmakers, meanwhile, flagged that the most popular college programs, Business Education, Teacher Education, and Engineering have not changed in 30 years.

Tracer studies also show graduates in these programs do not always secure stable or high-paying jobs, while industries like software engineering, animation, and game development continue to face shortages.

“What we have is that the bulk go to traditional courses… but not always gaining the benefits of college graduation after they finish,” Yee admitted.

The hearing also uncovered problems in the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) which is intended to help students with costs beyond tuition such as transportation, housing, and books.

In 2021, out of 501,000 senior high school graduates from 4Ps families, only 495 received TES.

Delayed releases, sometimes six to seven months, further discourage poor families from enrolling in college. The share of TES beneficiaries from the poorest students has since dropped from 74% in 2018 to just 31%.

“Ang ginagawa po kasi in the last years, binibigay ang TES post-enrollment… Ang mahihirap, hindi po magt-take ng ganoon risk,” Yee explained.

(What has been done in the last few years is to give the TES post-enrollment... The poor cannot take that kind of risk.)

The committee concluded that despite the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (RA 10931), free tuition alone is not enough to ensure students graduate.

With this, they urged CHED and UniFAST to improve subsidy targeting, allow more flexible programs for working students, and align course offerings with job market demand, warning that the country is losing a generation of future workers to a broken education system. –VAL, GMA Integrated News