Breaking News: UPMASA releases funds to cover lost tuition subsidy of 20 needy students.

LOST CHED Tuition subsidy

Through RA no 10931 provides free tuition to all undergraduate students of State Universities.   This covers the first 4 years.   After that, medical students at UPCM tuitions will be covered through a tuition fee subsidy provided by CHED and DBM.  The scheme is illustrated below

In the beginning of this year, without forewarning, CHED announced that it cannot cover further tuition subsidy at the UPCM.  This affected around 55 students.  The students then went through a screening process and by the beginning of March, 15 needy students were identified and 5 additional students could only afford partial payment of the tuition fee.    Dean Charlotte Chiong reached out to UPMASA for help.   The Legacies Committee was tasked by President Lou Publico to look for funding and we found that from the SALANGA largese, we had available funds to cover Php 37,000 per student for the 15 and Php 18,000 per student for the additional 5.    On March 18, our Treasurer and Finance Chair were given instructions to release Php 645,000 so that these students can complete their year.

For the next academic school year, instead of increasing our Scholarship subsidy to $2000/year in order to be competitive with the DOH scholarship, we decided to peg it at its current $1500/student per year in order to cover more students especially those who will no longer have the CHED subsidy available.

Reported by:

Henry Echiverri MD, co-Chair, UPMASA Legacies Committee