BAGUIO CITY – The chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education will defend the proposed higher budgets for state universities and colleges (SUCs) to help further improve the delivery of quality higher and technical education to the country’s youth.
Rep. Mark Go, chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education, claimed that SUCs in the Cordillera will surely benefit from the opposed increase in their annual budgets for the said institutions to cope up with the prevailing issues and concerns related to the quality of tertiary and technical education that had been confronting the country’s education sector.
“We will see to it that our state universities and colleges will have higher allocations in next year’s budget so that the delivery of quality tertiary and technical education will be sustained,” Go stressed in an online interview during last Friday’s One for the road live streamed program at the Facebook page and You Tube channel of herald Express.
The Baguio lawmaker said that he had the chance to meet with officials of all SUCs from the Cordillera to review their budget proposals for next year where he saw that there were already significant increases that were incorporated in their respective budgets that have been proposed to be included in the national expenditure program.
Earlier President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. approved the recommendation of the budget department that pegged the annual budget of the national government for 2025 at around P6.3 billion which is approximately more than 10 percent higher than the current P5.7 billion budget.
Congressman Go pointed out the importance of quality education that must be acquired by the students for them to be able to meet the stringent demands of the labor market and narrow the current job mismatch that has affected the employability of graduates from higher education institutions around the country.
According to him, students must be able to acquire the appropriate skills and knowledge that are required by the markets for them to be able to be gainfully employed and contribute to the country’s economy and avoid being unemployed.
He underscored that young professionals wanting to be employed should know and understand the job that they want to do because they had been prepared by the higher education institutions for the profession that they intend to embrace as their career instead of relying on available positions that will fit their qualifications.
Concerned officials from the University of Abra, formerly the Abra State Institute of Science and Technology (ASIST), Apayao State College (ASC), Benguet State University (BSU), Ifugao State University (IFSU), Kalinga State University (KSU) and the Mountain Province State Polytechnic College (MPSPC) expressed their gratitude to Congressman Go for assuring his support in working out the proposed increase in their respective budgets so that the said institutions will be able to hire additional personnel, procure the necessary learning materials, put up the needed infrastructures among others to sustain the enhancement of the delivery of quality tertiary education to their students who are enrolled. By HENT
