The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) on Thursday said the number of beneficiaries of Republic Act (RA) 10931 or the Unified Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education Act (UniFAST) has finally breached the million mark.
“As of today, 1.18 million students benefited from free higher education in the 112 SUCs (State Universities and Colleges) and 78 local universities and colleges,” Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chairman J. Prospero E. De Vera said during a budget hearing in the Senate.
De Vera said they prioritized the funding needs of the program since it is among the landmark legislation of the Durterte administration.
He noted the number of applicants for the beneficiary of their Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES), which is a component of RA 10931, reached 304,042.
The CHED chief said out of the 16 billion appropriation for TES, they used P15.4 billion.
CHED initially targeted only 300,000 TES beneficiaries. This comes even with the passage of the K to 12 program, which was supposed to reduce the number of college enrollees.
De Vera noted they were anticipating 50 percent of the 1.2 million first batch of K to 12 graduates was expected to enroll college.
“It appears it is actually higher than 50 percent went to higher education, I supposed it is because of the free [education],” De Vera said.
For the 2020 National Expenditure Program (NEP), CHED said it will be spending 86.71 percent of its P40 billion budget for UniFAST.