The future has become bleaker for the youth under the Arroyo administration. Year in, year out, the crisis of education sector has haunted the youth in the most unimaginable way, in all forms and schemes. Tuition increase, utilization of idled assets, exorbitant fees impositions; these have become normal scenes in the face of struggling youth.
This year isn’t an exemption. The reenacted budget adds up to the crisis, resulting in a huge number of dropouts. Clearly, the education has rapidly become a privilege to the affluent few, and not a right which the Constitution has clearly stipulated.
After reviewing the education sector situation, the Kabataan Partylist has come up with the following analysis:
Budget reenactment spells tuition hikes, more dropouts in state schools
The Kabataan Party today warned of a looming catastrophe for the education sector this year should Congress fail to pass the 2007 national budget.
“A reenacted budget could trigger the worst education crisis in history,” Kabataan Party president Raymond Palatino said.
Palatino explained that a reenacted national budget would only mean huge cutback in education spending as the government will have to do with the same budget it had in 2005. If ever, this is the third straight year that the government will operate in a reenacted budget, he added.
“The budget two years ago cannot in any way compensate the growing needs and population of the education sector, not to mention the urgency to modernize and upgrade school facilities.
He said a reenacted education budget would further aggravate the pitiful condition of education in the country and would make tertiary education even more elusive to ordinary Filipino youth.
He added that the unresolved controversy over the illegal provisions of the new Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) memorandum no. 14 or the guidelines for proposed tuition and miscellaneous fee hikes is bound to create more confusion on February when private schools file their applications for tuition hike next semester.
Last year, the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education said CHEd memorandum no. 14 is illegal as it allows private schools to increase tuition without proper consultation with students.
But an even bigger problem is set to confound tertiary education which Palatino compared to a ticking time bomb in the verge of an explosion.
With a decreasing budget for state schools every year, he said many state universities and colleges (SUCs) may soon follow the 300 percent tuition hike abruptly passed by the University of the Philippines (UP) Board of Regents last month.
Education spending has dropped from 19.3 percent of total government expenditures in 1997 to 15.5 percent in 2004. The average government spending on education per student is $170. This pales in comparison to Thailand ($550) and Malaysia ($930).
“The UP example and a reenacted budget will certainly attract other state school administrators to take the easier path and increase tuition to the detriment of poor but deserving student.”
He said this will consequently lead to an upsurge in college dropouts in the coming years.
“State schools supposedly are the last resort for college hopefuls and private school students who could no longer afford the excessive cost of college education. There is a very limited space left in state institutions and a tuition hike will make college education increasingly intangible and prohibitive even in public tertiary institutions.”
