The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) announced through a press release on July 26 that 292,438 college students from the previous academic year will be receiving their subsidy.

This is through the commission’s program called the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) which has beneficiaries from both public and private higher education institutions (HEIs). Amounting to P60,000 per student each school year, these subsidies are used to pay tuition, miscellaneous fees and other educational expenses.

According to CHED chairman J. Prospero de Vera III, the Department of Budget has recently released funds worth P6 billion to the commission for the program, making them able to cover the subsidies for those studying in state, local and private colleges and universities.

This follows the first three batches of stipends that were released separately beginning from March to 23,219 qualified beneficiaries from state and local universities, 120,798 private HEIs students and 62,671 in public HEIs.

Among those receiving the allowances from CHED for this new batch are 3,528 beneficiaries of the Expanded Students’ Grants-in-Aid Program for Poverty Alleviation (ESGP-PA) for the first semester. 44,224 first semester grantees in public colleges and universities and 97,173 continuing private college and university grantees from the first and part of second semester will also receive the additional stipend. Lastly, the 147,512 students from the Tulong Dunong Program in the first and second semesters of A.Y. 2019-2020 will also be granted subsidies from this batch.

“The Commission is releasing the additional TES stipends as soon as the money is downloaded to us by DBM because we know that the students need this badly during the pandemic,” said De Vera.

“I am instructing all public and private HEIs to fast track the distribution of the TES to their students so they can use this for paying their existing school fees and attend classes through flexible learning in August 2020,” he added.

Header photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

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