CHED, Kabataan party list decry 2011 budget cut

The Aquino administration slashed the 2011 budget of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) by 33 percent to P1.69 billion from P2.54 billion this year, the Kabataan party list said in a statement Wednesday. The CHED budget item that was cut the most was college scholarships, down to P501 million from P1.15 billion. Slashing CHED’s budget will only “aggravate the problems" faced by the higher education system, Kabataan party list Rep. Raymond Palatino said in a statement Wednesday. CHED executive director Julito Vitriolo noted the main impact of the budget cut was not on the allotments for personal services or maintenance or other operating expenses, but on several programs intended to increase the quality and accessibility of higher education in the country. “Programs namin ang talagang apektado. Marami kaming hindi maitutuloy na proyekto next year (Our programs are really affected. There are plenty of projects which we won’t be able to continue next year)," he said in an interview with GMANews.TV. No new scholarship grants CHED has given P840 million worth of scholarships to over 57,000 beneficiaries. But the 43 percent budget cut for college scholarships means that CHED will not be awarding any new scholarships for the coming year, according to him. “Syempre, dahil walang budget, walang nang madadagdag dyan. Maintain na lang namin ang scholarships namin ngayon (Of course, because there is no budget, there’s nothing to add to that. We will just maintain the scholarships we have now.)," he said. “The decrease in scholarship funds is yet another blow to higher education," said Palatino in the statement, adding that the financial burden would fall on parents and children “who cannot afford the cost of a college education." The faculty development program of CHED, which funds masteral and doctoral scholarships for professors, will also have to be scaled down next year from their original targets, Vitriolo said. For 2011, CHED had originally proposed a budget of P2.6 billion. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad explained that in line with the Aquino administration's "zero-based budget approach," every agency is required to justify its budget request in complete detail starting from scratch or zero with all expenditures reviewed and approved, not just the increases over the previous budget. In response to the budget cut Vitriolo said that in response to the budget cut, CHED will have to rely on the Higher Education Development Fund or HEDF. In a Sept. 20 memorandum to President Benigno Aquino III, Abad said that “aside from the direct appropriations from the national government, SUCs [state universities and colleges] can [dip into] the HEDF which CHED uses to support projects which are intended to promote centers of excellence in both public and private sectors." However, the HEDF fund for 2011 was also cut by about P103.17 million from the 2010 allocation, Palatino pointed out. For 2011, “Some P750.8 million was provided to CHED under the HEDF for 2011," Abad said in the same memo. “How can the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) propose that SUCs can avail of the HEDF when in the first place, it slashed the said budgetary item?" Palatino said. Poor and erroneous data CHED chair Patricia Licuanan also labeled the data used by the DBM as “poor" and “erroneous," according to a the party list statement. Vitriolo said that there were indeed “inconsistencies" in the data DBM used to compute CHED’s budget. The DBM cited “surplus funds" from which CHED could draw on, but these funds were actually the remaining and unreleased balance of the current budget, he explained. “Those aren’t surplus funds, it’s part of our budget, at accounted for na kung saan namin gagastusin (and we’ve already accounted for how we’ll spend it)," he said. These “inconsistent statements and data only disprove the government’s claim that it prioritizes the education sector," Palatino said. —VS, GMANews.TV