Rising tuition hurting, students, parents

BEHIND THE SCENES

Alfred P. Dizon

(With the start of enrollment in public and private schools, we would like to share this e-mailed view of Cielo Marie Bayson of the National Union of Students in the Philippines Baguio-Benguet on the matter.)

The NUSP expresses its strong objection to the continuing school fee increases and the apparent light-handed approach the government has taken with regard to the issue.  The fee increases in both private and public schools have evolved from being prohibitive in nature to being actual deterrents for millions of Filipino youth who wish to have access to quality education.

The deregulation of tuition in private schools and the continued budget cuts in state universities and colleges (SUCs) have made tuition and miscellaneous fees skyrocket. In the past ten years (from 2001 – 2011), we have observed the following:

SUCs have had their state subsidies go down from 87.74% to 66.31% causing a spike in tuition rates and miscellaneous fees in SUCs;

The average tuition of private schools in the NCR has doubled from P 9, 231 per semester to P 20, 591 per semester while the national average has gone up from P 5, 406 to P10, 526;

Exorbitant, unjust, and redundant fees have abounded. Examples are athletic fees with additional sports fees, installment fees, power charge fees, internet fees, etc;

In the past six years, the top five highest earning private schools raked in P 3.45 billion in net income;Seventy-three percent (73% ) of students are forced to drop out due to the high cost of education  according to a 2008 UNESCO study;

For 2011, the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) says that only two out of ten (2 out of 10) high school students will be able to go to college.

Clearly, the increasing costs of education have denied the youth access to knowledge that would significantly improve the quality of their lives. But the national implication of this is even more troubling as the National Statistical Coordination Board has recently pointed out that the low growth in the percentage (only 2.9%) of college graduates in the last decade is undermining the country’s “knowledge base” and development of human capital.

Year in and year out, the NUSP has campaigned for better ways and means of tuition regulation and an end to profiteering schemes in schools. However, with the clear detrimental effects of school fee increases amidst the worsening economic status of Filipinos, the NUSP is now pushing for a tuition moratorium alongside its call for better tuition regulation and higher state subsidy for education.  

Thus, we also give our support to the KabataanPartylist’s following House Bills:

House Bill 1962,  which moves for automatic appropriation of  6% of the GDP to education,

House Bill 3708,  which pushes for tuition increase moratorium,

and House Bill 4286, which pushes for tuition regulation.

We ask that the Congress takes these bills up and pass them for the sake of the youth and the future generations.Finally, we also push for the repeal of Batas Pambansa No. 32, also known as the Education Act of 1982, upon which the idea of deregulation of schools (including tuition, miscellaneous fees, and even the curriculum) is founded.

The Education Act of 1982 provides the guidelines governing the collection and application of tuition and other school fees by all educational institutions. Particularly, Section 42 of the said act allows private schools to determine tuition rates.