Duterte vetoes consolidated Senate, House bill granting nat’l polytechnic university status to PUP

FILE: Freedom Plaza, Mabini Campus, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila (Photo by Team Deremoe/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

President Rodrigo Duterte did not sign a consolidated bill of the upper and lower house seeking to grant national polytechnic university status to the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP).

“While I recognize the noble objective of the measure to promote, foster, nurture, and the right of all citizens to accessible quality education, I have serious reservations on the suitability of the means chosen to attain this end, namely, granting the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) the status of a national polytechnic university, with all the benefits and privileges such status entails,” Duterte said in his veto message to the Congress dated September 4 but was only released to media on Saturday, September 7.

Despite its stature in the education sector, Duterte said that PUP is among other state universities (SUCs), and that such proposal to designate it as a national polytechnic university has to be “reassessed” in light of its current performance ranking among other SUCs.

“The comparative performance of its satellite campuses and extension programs needs to be similarly evaluated before granting the PUP system as a whole privileged status,” he said.

Duterte said the bill consolidating Senate Bill No.

2124 and House Bill No. 9023 provides granting of fiscal autonomy to PUP, “which departs from the adopted policy of granting only institutional autonomy to SUCs.”

“The proposed provision on appropriations would also have a significant fiscal impact on the government, which may be avoided only if the PUP budget would continue to be subject to the need for prioritization and the usual budgetary and monetary processes,” the President added.

Founded in October 1904, the PUP has now more than 20 campuses, with its main campus located in Sta. Mesa, Manila.

In April 2018, Jobstreet.com Philippines reported that employers prefer to hire graduates from the PUP as they believe in the school’s “reputation of producing quality graduates and eventual employees.”