Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) chairman Prospero De Vera III has pointed to mental health issues as among the major reasons behind the increasing dropout rate of college students in the country.

This was cited during a Senate subcommittee on finance’s hearing during which senator Joel Villanueva raised concern on the high attrition rate that has continued to prevail in the past decade.

According to the education official, financial difficulty, which covers transportation costs, clothing, food, and internet, family problems, relocation, mental health; and academic difficulty are the main reasons behind the dropout rate.

“Emerging reason is a mental health concern that we did not expect previously, while academic difficulty placed only fifth. Mental health concern is a higher reason for stopping [compared to] academic difficulty. They are having difficulty studying, but their mental health has really been affected,” De Vera noted.

In retrospect, Senator Villanueva highlighted data that showed an alarming number of college students dropping out of college, like in batch 2021 which registered a 40.6 percent attrition rate and batch 2022 with 39.3 percent.

“It appears now that at least four out of 10 students in higher education either temporarily or permanently left school last academic year 2022 to 2023. Of 17 regions, BARMM posted the highest attrition rate at 93.4 percent,” Villanueva reacted.

In response, though, Chairman De Vera disclosed that CHEd has already began two projects on mental health and our now upgrading on the training of counsellors to address the problem.

“We are working with Miriam College to roll out training of guidance counselors in schools and also the support staff on how to identify mental health concerns; we have a project with UNILAB because they have a toolkit already on mental health, which we are rolling out to the schools,” he said.