21/08/2026
COLUMN | TSU Grows, but Who Carries the Cost?
A public university cannot be expected to grow on paper while its resources barely
grow with it.
Tarlac State University is projected to receive ₱1.041 billion in New General
Appropriations in 2027, only ₱4.319 million more than its ₱1.037 billion allocation in 2026.
That is a 0.42% increase, a sharp slowdown from the 13.35% increase the university
received the year before.
Meanwhile, TSU’s student population grew by 6.09%, from 25,476 students in
2024 to 27,026 in 2025.
More students are coming in. The university has more people to serve. Yet the
growth in its proposed funding has nearly stopped. And when resources fail to keep up with the demands of a growing university, someone eventually has to carry the weight.
Students should not be that someone.
This becomes harder to ignore when viewed alongside TSU’s implementation of its
opt-out mechanism under the Free Higher Education program. In 2024, 2,539 students opted out of free higher education in the first semester, while 2,398 did so in the second.
What happens when a student who once could afford to pay no longer can?
TSU has not publicly identified why the number fell by 141 students, so it would be unfair to assume that those students could no longer afford the fees. But the question is still worth asking, especially because students who have already opted out cannot later avail of free higher education.
A student's financial situation is not guaranteed to stay the same throughout college. A family can lose a source of income. Expenses can suddenly increase.
Emergencies happen. What a student can afford during their first year may not be what they can afford by their third or fourth. That is where the opt-out mechanism becomes more than an administrative policy. It becomes a question of how securely access to public education is being protected.
Free higher education should not only help students enter a university. It should help them stay there. And staying in university requires classrooms, laboratories,
equipment, faculty, staff, utilities, and other services that students depend on every day.
None of these disappear simply because tuition does.
TSU’s 2025 financial report makes that reality clear. The university still needs its services to function. In 2025, TSU’s current appropriations included ₱488.95 million for Personnel Services, ₱432.49 million for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses, and ₱61.92 million for Capital Outlay. These are the costs of keeping a university alive.
That is exactly why the proposed 0.42% increase deserves scrutiny.
TSU is not only accommodating more students. It is doing so while continuing to
fund the daily operations that already keep the university functioning. The proposed
increase of ₱4.319 million is therefore difficult to look at in isolation, especially when the previous year's budget grew by ₱122.128 million.
So the issue is not that TSU should simply receive more money because more money is always better. It is whether the government is giving a growing state university enough room to meet the responsibilities it is being asked to carry.
That question becomes harder to ignore when TSU reported ₱395.99 million in
school-fee income in 2025, following ₱336.25 million in tuition-fee collections in 2024.
These figures do not prove that student payments are being used to cover a funding shortage. But they do show why the relationship between government funding and what students are asked to pay deserves attention.
A public university should not have to choose between accommodating more students and keeping education affordable for them. And students should not become the easiest answer when the numbers no longer add up, because students did not create the funding gap. They are simply the ones who will experience its consequences if the gap is left unaddressed.
Conversely, the proposed ₱1.041-billion allocation is still subject to congressional deliberations before the final General Appropriations Act is enacted. That means there is still room to ask whether the proposed amount reflects what TSU actually needs. And these questions should be asked now, not after students are already feeling the effects.
Will the university have enough resources to accommodate a growing student population?
Will facilities and services be able to keep up?
Will students continue to have meaningful access to higher education without being asked to shoulder more of the cost?
TSU is growing. Its funding should not be expected to stand still.
And if there is a gap between what the university is expected to provide and what it is given to provide it, that gap should be addressed by those who control public funding, not quietly passed down to the students who came to TSU in the first place because higher education was supposed to be within their reach.
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Written by Riane Venice Pamintuan
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