CHED provides grants to boost Region 6 tourism, engineering education

The Commission on Higher Education, on Saturday, inaugurated special project grants at the University of Antique (UA) as part of the CHED's effort to improve the quality of the education received by tourism and engineering students in Region 6.

To help the tourism industry, CHED provides grants to establish hot and cold kitchens for tourism students to be able to train using actual equipment being utilized in the industry.

“Kasi dati maliliit yung mga gas range nila, so when they graduate in their tourism management [or] HRM [programs], when they go to industry they have to be retrained because they don’t know how to use industrial machines,” said CHED Chairman J. Prospero de Vera III in a press conference.

(Before, they had small gas ranges, so when they graduate from their tourism management [or] HRM [programs], when they go to industry they have to be retrained because they don’t know how to use industrial machines.)

The commission also provided additional grants for a tourism program for universities and local governments to develop local and state universities in Region 6 to become their own tourism spots.

“[We] can go to them and they can help local government and tourism,” added de Vera.

iLaboratories for engineering students were also established through the same project initiative.

“The idea is we want our students to use the latest equipment, latest technology so we produce good graduates. This is the project of CHED where we put state of the art IT labs in different schools with a software that is common across all schools connected to software used in other countries and so the schools can have classes together,” the CHED chairman said.

“That’s the idea, you maximize the use of technology in classrooms,” he added.

Most state universities and colleges in Region 6 received grants through the Higher Educational Development Fund, which comes from collections of travel tax from the Department of Tourism, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), and the Professional Regulation Commission for the development of higher education.

Over P26 billion was allotted for free higher education under the General Appropriations Act.

De Vera said that funding for tourism-related projects increased to almost 40% and that he planned to allot 50% of tourism tax collections to tourism-related projects. — DVM, GMA Integrated News