CHED negotiating SUC budget increase

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is already in negotiations with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on how they can increase the 2012 budget for state universities and colleges (SUC), its chairman Dr. Patricia Licuanan said Tuesday. "Let me say, perhaps unofficially, that we are in ongoing conversations and negotiations with the DBM on ways to increase the 2012 SUCs' budget," Licuanan said during the Senate finance committee hearing on CHED's proposed budget for 2012. She explained that some of the ways the budget may be improved is by increasing the SUCs' capital outlay and by releasing the budget for personnel services from the DBM's miscellaneous personnel benefit fund (MPBF) earlier. She also said that they are considering recomputing the budget for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) through normative financing but without the ceiling that is usually imposed. "The conversations are still going on but we seem to be making some headway and we expect that we will be getting a slightly better budget for SUCs," said Licuanan. Protests vs budget cuts Several groups have repeatedly been asking for an increase in the budget of SUCs. Last month, Senator Koko Pimentel, Kabataan party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino, Anakbayan national chairperson Venser Crisostomo, and the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC) specifically asked Congress to increase or at least restore the budget for SUCs in 2012. Groups have likewise been holding protest actions ever since the House of Representatives approved at the committee level the DBM's proposed budget for 2012 without amendments. Pimentel, however, said he will personally move for the increase or restoration of the budget for SUCs when they tackle it in the Senate at the committee level. Budget for SUCs At the hearing, the CHED chief said the SUCs have an approved budget of P26 billion for 2012, although their proposed budget is P39 billion. On the other hand, she said that CHED only has a budget of P2.2 billion, P786 million of which is already allocated for automatic appropriations. Licuanan said there are a total of 2,247 higher education institutions in the country, including 424 satellite campuses. Of the 2,247 higher education institutions, she said that 643 are public and 1,604 are private. However, 60 percent of students (1.74 million) still enroll in public institutions while 40 percent (1.1 million) enroll in private. "More and more students are going into public higher education institutions (so) the distribution... is uneven," she said. — RSJ, GMA News