COLLEGE and university administrators were asked over the weekend to lower expensive entrance examination fees, currently ranging from P500 to P1,000, for students seeking to enroll in major universities.
Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III aired his appeal after “concerned parents aired complaints bewailing prohibitive” rates currently being charged to allow college-level students to take the tests.
Pimentel said these high school graduates would understandably seek options in going to college and their parents would want them to be given opportunities.
“But if applying at one school requires a P500 fee, then applying to four, five schools can be quite expensive,” he said.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Senate President notes even large state universities like the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) charge rates similar to private schools—but have thousands more applicants.
For instance, Pimentel, who studied law in UP, cited estimates that some 80,000 students apply to UP annually, while about 60,000 take the PUP college entrance exam every school year.
“Even assuming these schools only charge half of the applicants the full rate, this means that, conservatively, UP and PUP earn something like P20-million and P15-million, respectively, on entrance fees each year. Does it really cost that much to administer these exams?” he wondered.
Pimentel said he is proposing that Philippine educators should work together with the Department of Education (DepEd) to “come up with a standardized test for K-12 graduates acceptable to all tertiary education institutions—a single test that will eliminate the need for schools to administer their own entrance exams.”