By Joey Sarte Salceda
Institute for Risk and Strategic Studies, Inc.
Success has many fathers, they say, but failure is an orphan. The Free College Tuition Law is no exception. Many have since claimed to be its “fathers.” I have sometimes been called one myself, though to be precise, that recognition came from former Commission on Higher Education Chair Prospero de Vera.
But policymaking does not mature through self-congratulatory applause. No policy improves without self-correction. And so, if others prefer to claim only success, I will do the harder part.
During the deliberations on the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, my biggest mistake was not pushing back hard enough against one provision — the exclusion clause stating that students who have already obtained a bachelor’s degree, or who have completed a technical-vocational course equivalent to at least National Certificate III and above, are no longer eligible for free publicly funded technical and vocational education and training. That clause was a mistake.
The evidence is visible in enrollment patterns and labor demand. In academic year 2023–2024, higher education enrollment stood at about 122,755 students. Nearly half were concentrated in two disciplines: business administration and related programs at 22.8 percent, and education and teacher training at 20.2 percent. Adding information technology at 8.8 percent and engineering and technology at 10.2 percent, that means more than 60 percent of all enrollees are clustered in fields whose entry-level tasks are precisely those now being automated or compressed by artificial intelligence.
Business administration graduates traditionally enter jobs built around bookkeeping, basic accounting, compliance documentation, scheduling, customer service triage, and routine analysis. These functions are now largely software-driven. Education graduates face a similar squeeze as lesson planning, content delivery, assessment, and remediation become increasingly AI-assisted, reducing the number of roles where a four-year specialization is economically necessary. In information technology and engineering, artificial intelligence has not eliminated work, but it has thinned the bottom of the ladder. Junior programmers, testers, drafters, and routine technical roles are absorbed more slowly, narrowing entry points.
By contrast, disciplines least exposed to AI substitution remain marginal in enrollment. Service trades account for less than 2 percent. Maritime programs are under 1 percent. Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries represent just 5.6 percent. These are sectors anchored in physical execution, spatial judgment, regulated safety, and human interaction, where automation tends to complement rather than replace labor.
At the same time, the country’s most dynamic employment generators do not privilege college diplomas. The business process outsourcing sector does not. Export-oriented manufacturing does not. Hospitality does not. Even a large share of overseas Filipino worker demand is skills-based rather than degree-based. Yet policy implicitly signaled that college was the only serious option, and that technical education was secondary.
The exclusion clause reinforced that signal, and the effects are measurable. From 2019 to 2023, total enrollment under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority fell from about 2.49 million to 1.63 million. Even accounting for the pandemic shock, enrollment never returned to its pre-law trajectory. Institution-based training, which should have anchored formal reskilling and diploma-level programs, declined sharply. Enterprise-based training, the most direct bridge to employment, remained structurally small.
Graduation figures tell the same story. Total TVET graduates fell from 2.24 million in 2019 to 1.43 million in 2023. Free college tuition weakened technical education, and in an economy shaped by artificial intelligence, that weakness will compound.
Policy then aggravated the problem by obliging TESDA to “predict” enrollment in state-run technical vocational institutions. Enrollment did not collapse because of forecasting error. It collapsed because policy itself discouraged participation, reinforcing the mistaken belief that a technical diploma is an inferior good relative to a college degree.
To be fair, that exclusion clause did not emerge out of nowhere. It emerged from fiscal pressure. Economic managers were already raising sustainability concerns and signaling a veto of free college tuition. Extending unconditional free access to state-run technical vocational institutions, including for degree holders, would have intensified their opposition.
Still, that trade-off was wrong. By treating education as a one-shot entitlement rather than a recurring public investment, policy locked people into early choices and weakened the system that should have absorbed displacement, correction, and adaptation.
The correction is straightforward. State-run technical vocational education and training should be unconditionally free, regardless of prior educational attainment.
TVET is not just a substitute or alternative to a college degree. It is an instrument of labor flexibility. It is protection against technological displacement. It is the mechanism by which workers adapt when markets, technology, or early decisions move faster than credentials.
Free college tuition expanded first chances. It is time to strengthen second chances with the same decisiveness. It also follows another sensible thing. Kiko Benitez is one of the best people in government. If we cannot amend the Free College Tuition Law to remove that clause, the fastest way to correct the mistake is to give Secretary Benitez all the money his agency needs to succeed.