Rising Tuition

EDITORIAL

It is just a few more weeks up to mid-terms but college students are raising a howl over rising tuition.

A Baguio university for example, charges P10,852 for 23 units. lab fee is P7, 179, miscellaneous P5,085.31 and “other fee” is P225 aside from other fees for a grand total of P23,341. Other universities in the city charge higher. Students and parents are complaining even as tuition rates go higher.

This is happening nationwide and student groups are now pressing their cause in Congress for deregulation of education, lesser tuition and other school fees, and student democratic rights. 

MarbenPanlasigui, of National Union of Students of the Philippines Baguio-Benguet Chapter said an alliance of students recently attended public hearing of the committee on higher and technical education of the House of Representatives to assert their position to have genuine legislative measures for students and youth.

This, after Kabataan Partylist Rep. Terry Ridon filed House bills and resolutions which Panlasigui said, were intended to safeguard right of students and youth to education.

These included HB 354 for three-year moratorium on tuition increases; HB 698 for tuition regulation; HR 756, investigation on other school fees; HR 894, review of developmental fees; HR 895for review on automatic fee increase for freshmen and HB 1098, the student rights bill.

Sarah Elago, Rise for Education Alliance convenorsaid “house bills and resolutions have a comprehensive take on student rights and welfare – the result of collective research of students and youth all over the country. These bills are seen not as paper promises but real assertions for a just and accessible education for the Filipino youth.”

The education alliance believes the KabataanPartylist bills address perennial problems of Philippine education system: commercialization and privatization, high cost of tuition and other school fees, dropout, and ballooning out of school youth, among others.

“We strongly urge our legislators to stand and confront the root cause of problems of Philippine education. The house bills and resolution decisively go against neo-liberalization and deregulation of education,” said Elago.

The alliance said their attendance in the committee hearing was an ample opportunity to present and expose the condition of the Filipino youth even as they vowed to intensify the fight through legal and other measures.

The NUSP, in an email said they are a “patriotic, democratic, progressive alliance of student leaders that upholds and defends the rights and welfare of the Filipino students who seeks to unite all students in the country through student councils, governments and unions in the struggle for the fundamental right to education for a nationalist, scientific and mass orientedsystem of education.