Provisions of Republic Act 10687 establishing a system for financial aid for college students have been largely unimplemented ten years since its passage, with the National Student Loan Program, required impact evaluations, and resource generation responsibilities, still pending ten years since the establishment of UNIFAST.. This was revealed during a hearing on the CHED charter held by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2).
RA 10687 established the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) in 2015, and was tasked to “harmonize, reform, strengthen, expand, rationalize, and re-focus all legislated or ongoing StuFAPs of the government for greater efficiency, coherence, synchronization, effective funding, and improved coordination among implementing entities in their specific jurisdiction” (Section 5).
“The UniFAST was the government’s answer to what was observed to be a ‘fragmented and meager’, ‘untargeted’ and ‘unharmonious’”, said EDCOM 2 Executive Director Dr. Karol Mark Yee. “The main goal of UniFAST was to harmonize all existing student financial assistance programs of the government across different agencies, to ensure improved efficiency and efficiency. However, ten years later, many of the intentions of the law are still unfulfilled”.
Currently, UniFAST oversees the implementation of the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education (UAQTE) Program, which includes the Tertiary Education Subsidy, as well as the Tulong Dunong Program. However, based on the law, the UNIFAST was also tasked to (1) adopt a Qualifying Examination System for scoring students for merit and talent-based scholarships, (2) conduct impact evaluation studies to determine which StuFAPs shall be adopted, continued, or terminated, (3) formulate a long-term plan for a self-sustaining National Student Loan Program, and (4) develop and maintain a website that contains all accredited public and private tertiary education institutions.
However, EDCOM 2 found that these core provisions of the UniFAST law have been largely unimplemented.
Intent of UniFAST sidelined
Dr. Patricia Licuanan, former CHED chairperson, lamented how UniFAST’s implementation was left undone and centered on its concept of helping students brave their finances in college, especially their tuition fees in higher education institutions.
“When we launched the UniFAST, that was very groundbreaking and it was used almost like a career development for students. But again, here, the free universal tuition came out and everyone got focused on that,” Dr. Licuanan said. “So, the UniFAST board and UniFAST Secretariat [were] not able to do the other stuff, which is also very important.”
University of Makati President and EDCOM 2 Standing Committee Member on Higher Education Professor Elyxzur Ramos shared how local universities, like UMak, have used funding from UniFAST as an incentive for LUCs to offer common college courses, at the expense of innovation.
“I’ve always said that, if you are a local politician, it makes sense for you to put up a school. You will look good to your constituents, and you can easily pass on the cost to the national government through UniFAST – you just have to invest in putting up a building, and you come up with programs which are easiest to get COPC (Certificate of Program Compliance) approval”, Ramos said.
“This is why we see a lot of LUCs duplicating courses that are also being offered by a lot of SUCs and private HEIs”, he continued.
This was echoed in EDCOM 2’s presentation, citing feedback from State Universities and Colleges, where SUCs became more “reliant on national government subsidies and delayed reimbursements from the UniFAST fund”.
Guidelines for student aid programs in two weeks’ time
UniFAST Executive Director Atty. Ryan Estevez concurred with Licuanan, explaining that when UniFAST was passed, the board initially intended to focus on its mandates. However, the subsequent passage of the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, which institutionalized free tuition, led the UniFAST board to prioritize the implementation of free higher education programs. This shift in focus “backtracked” the original functions under RA 10687. It was only in 2022 and 2023, when funds for free higher education for SUCs were directly released to them, that UniFAST began to have time to address its original unfulfilled mandates.
“So in 2023, we started doing the Technical Working Groups (TWGs) for harmonization of StuFAPs. We started with some agencies like DOST. May mga number of agencies coming in with the hopes of having unified guidelines on student financial assistance systems. But most of them ang hesitation is parang ang dating kasi sa kanila kukunin namin yung kanilang scholarship programs. So medyo may hesitation doon sa part na yon”, Estevez said.
“But we made it clear that we just wanted harmonized guidelines for StuFAPs. So we did a draft actually, and in two weeks’ time magkakaroon kami ng meeting with some of the agencies because we will present to them the draft guidelines of harmonized StuFAPs. So that’s what we’re going to do in the next two weeks”, he continued.
EDCOM 2 Co-Chairperson Roman Romulo expressed dissatisfaction with the slow progress of the student loan program, questioning if these provisions had been exhaustively explored.
“Under the UniFAST law pwede niyong hingan ng tulong yung DBP and LandBank – they have their own scholarship already nagbibigay na sila ng “study now pay later”. Government agency rin yun eh so hindi ko maintindihan why why don’t you want to coordinate with them”, Romulo said.
CHED Executive Director Atty. Cinderella Benitez-Jaro also pointed to CHED’s stagnant manpower complement as a reason for UniFAST’s delay in implementing its requirements under the law. She stated that after 2018, CHED was tasked with implementing numerous laws, including UniFAST, but its organizational structure and plantilla positions remained the same. This has strained CHED’s capacity to fulfill all responsibilities, including managing the significant financial outlay of UniFAST.
“Ang nadagdag lang po sa amin with the implementation of [the UniFAST law], meron pong 18-20 plantilla positions and then sa Transnational Education Law there were created at least mga five plantilla positions po. But essentially all remain the same”, Jaro stated.
CHED Chairperson Dr. Shirley Agrupis also noted that the significant increase in CHED’s budget (e.g., 32.7 billion in 2022) is primarily earmarked for RA 10931 (free higher education) and TES, leaving less flexibility for other grants or quality improvement initiatives, particularly for private institutions.
EDCOM 2 requested that UniFAST submit a timeline for accomplishing its nine unfulfilled mandates as stipulated in its charter by August 3.
