Finance Secretary Ralph G. Recto wants to keep the government's free college education program unchanged, dismissing any proposals to set some qualification requirements.

Recto, the chief architect of the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education (UAQTE) Act, said that the national government should continue investing more in education.

“Of course, it's a mix between where do we spend it, in the primary, secondary, tertiary? There's always going to be that debate. But ang mahalaga [what’s important is that], we spend more on education,” Recto told reporters.

Given that education is the most crucial investment, Recto emphasized the need to allocate fiscal resources to support it.

“I think we should make space for that [education]. I think it's the most important investment,” he added.

Recto's position stands in contrast to that of former Finance Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno, who previously contended that the UAQTE was "inefficient and wasteful."

In September 2023, Diokno suggested that providing free tuition to all students in government-run universities and colleges might not be wise, as he believed that not all students were fully committed to their studies.

“The present regime is unwieldy, inefficient, and wasteful,” Diokno had said. “An indicator of wastefulness is the rising dropout rate.”

Between 2016 and 2022, college students had a dropout and attrition rate of about 34 percent, based on the Commission on Higher Education data.

The budget for the UAQTE was raised to P21.7 billion this year to cater to approximately 3.14 million college students nationwide.

The UAQTE law, also known as Republic Act (RA) 10931, was passed in 2017, making it mandatory for public higher education and government-run technical-vocational institutions to provide free quality tertiary education to Filipino students.

According to Diokno, the current UAQTE law, which faced opposition from former President Rodrigo R. Duterte's economic managers in 2017, was not financially sustainable.