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Budget cut protests unite state colleges and
universities, big protest slated on September 23
PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2011
www.bulatlat.com
“Spending on SUCs and education is an investment to develop our country’s
human resources. Congress and the Aquino government should rethink its
misguided priorities and realign funds from foreign debt, CCTs, and
military spending in favor of education and social services.” – JC
Alejandro, League of Filipino Students
By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — Thousands of students, together with members of the faculty,
non-teaching personnel and administrators of the Polytechnic University of
the Philippines marched hand-in-hand in a show of unity to call for
sufficient government subsidy to higher education.
“This is a clear political statement against (President) Aquino’s budget
cuts. Today, the students definitely shook the government,” Rommel
Aguilar, PUP student regent, told Bulatlat.com.
PUP’s unity march is part of the week-long nationwide strike of students,
which was prompted by Aquino’s budget cuts on state universities and
colleges. In the 2012 budget, about $13.15 million was deducted from the
already too meager allocations that government provides to higher
education institutions.
In a Manifesto of Unity, signed by PUP administrators, faculty and student
organizations, they said that for the past five years, their budget is
“always at the edge of the cliff because of budget cuts.” Last year, PUP’s
allocation for its Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses, was slashed
by $544,000. PUP is considered as the country’s largest state university
with 20 campuses nationwide and a student population of about 65,000.
In the proposed 2012 budget, the Manifesto of Unity read, there appears to
be an increase of $1.32 million in its budget. However, they said, $1.07
million from this amount would be allocated to Personal Services, which is
in accordance with the salary adjustment provided for by Salary
Standardization Law 3. Only the remaining $243,877 would be allocated to
its MOOE.
“It is quite deceiving if we were pacified with this dubious budget
proposal because, the University Budget Services stated, PUP needs $46
million to operate.
No budget for capital outlay
Similar to other state universities and colleges, the PUP has no
allocation for capital outlay, which, according to the PUP’s Manifesto of
Unity, is “essentially intended for Land and Land Improvement Outlay,
Building and Structures Outlay and finally for Office Equipment Furniture
and Fixtures” with an estimated amount of about $15.33 million.
Kenneth Evangelista, a second year student from PUP’s College of
Technology, said their administrators have always been justifying their
high tuition fees, which is $6 per unit (compared to the main campus’s
$0.28), because of the supposed high end facilities and laboratories that
they would have. “But it is not true,” he told Bulatlat.com.
Evangelista said that in their keyboarding classes, their professors ask
them to bring makeshift keyboards drawn on an illustration board. “At
times we would just raise our hands in the air and imagine the keyboards.
I do not know how our professors determine whether we type the correct or
wrong letters.”
He added that they always do their activities in their computer classes by
groups because there are very few computers, no more than 10 units per
laboratory. In software classes, there were times, Evangelista said, that
their professors ask them to watch videos in Youtube demonstrating how the
software is bering manipulated. They are then required to write a reaction
paper on it.
“School facilities and laboratories are there to facilitate the learning
process of students. If we have poor facilities, then it should be
expected that the quality of education would also deteriorate,” PUP
student regent Aguilar said.
Aguilar said PUP has not been receiving a budget for Capital Outlay for
the past five years.
Other schools
Other state universities and colleges nationwide also staged protest
actions to denounce the budget cuts. “From petitions for dialogues to open
letters, we have exhausted all means of asking President Aquino for a
budget which will allow our university to function without resorting to
fee increases. It seems President Aquino is playing deaf to our entreaties
for decent funding for our university,” said University of the Philippines
(UP) student regent Krissy Conti in a statement.
The country’s premiere state university UP with a population of some
52,000 students is currently operating on a $132.7 million budget, after
last year’s biggest budget cut amounting to $31.52 million. In the
proposed 2012 budget, however, the allocation for the UP system was
further reduced by $4.92 million, thereby reducing the allocation further
to $127.87 million, which, according to youth groups, is a far cry from
the $392.4 million that UP needs to operate its seven constituent units,
including the Philippine General Hospital.
To show their outrage, hundreds of students staged a “freeze mob” at the
Palma Hall lobby and held noise barrages around the campus. Students from
the UP Manila campus, on the other hand, wore a “we are on strike” shirts.
They also held a flash dance, where they also launched their jingle titled
“Born This Way-Budget Cut,” a parody of Lady Gaga’s song Born This Way.
The students also “planked” or did a “die-in” protest along Padre Faura
street.
Some students wore laboratory gowns with “no to budget cut” written on
them to signify the measly subsidy for health services as well.
“Students have crafted creative activities and engaged in massive build-up
actions. These are a concrete manifestation of the youth’s rage against
the systemic neglect of social services,” said College Editors Guild of
the Philippines national deputy secretary Gidget Estella said.
In Panay, the Northern Iloilo Polytechnic State College’s proposed 2012
total budget is lower by $118,725 while the Aklan State University’s
budget is $210,716 lower compared to this year’s budget. The Western
Visayas State College of Science and Technology’s Personal Services
allocation is lower by $72,856 while Western Visayas State University’s
MOOE is down by $86,603.
“The P238 billion allotments for basic education cannot even address the
massive shortages in teachers, classrooms, chairs, and textbooks. This is
way below the minimum 6 percent GDP education spending mandated by the
UNESCO. To say that the 2012 budget is social services-friendly is
therefore deceptive,” said WVSU-University Student Council officer Krisma
Porquia.
Other state universities and colleges who have confirmed their
participation in the week-long nationwide strike of students include
Philippine Normal University, Eulogio Amang Rodriguez Institute of Science
and Technology, Don Honorio Ventura State University, Pangasinan State
University, Urdaneta City University, Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State
University- South La Union Campus.
Budget cut unifies students, admin
The recent budget cut has turned into a unifying issue for all the
stakeholders in state universities and colleges. In PUP, for example, the
burning of dilapidated chairs by students protesting the impending 2,000
percent tuition hike earlier this year, heightened the differences between
them and the university administration. This changed when the whole PUP
community marched hand in hand against the budget cuts.
“Our problems could not be resolved internally, even if we change the
unversityl president. The only solution is a sufficient budget,” Dr.
Samuel Salvador, vice president for Academic Affairs, said during the
press conference. “A sufficient budget is key to quality education.”
Aside from their manifesto of unity, PUP’s key administrators,
non-teaching personnel and student organization issued a statement against
the budget cut. Salvador also issued Office Memorandum Order No. 8, Series
of 2011, urging his fellow faculty members and students to support the
activities of student organizations against the insufficient budget given
to higher education.
UP Diliman Chancellor Caesar Saloma and faculty members declared their
opposition to the budget cut in a faculty forum on the 2012 national
budget. UP President Alfredo E. Pascual, for his part, also called for an
increase in government subsidy to UP. “Government financial support for UP
is not an expense, but an investment that will yield copious dividends for
our country and people,” Pascual said in a speech he delivered during his
investiture at the University Theater of UP Diliman last September 15.
Big protest on 23
“What we are pushing for, what we are fighting for is not just for us. We
are on strike to ensure that the government sets its priorities straight
for the coming generations of Filipinos,” Einstein Recedes, president of
the National Union of Students in the Philippines, said.
Recedes added that if students will not demand for their right to quality
and accessible education, future Filipino students would have nothing to
look forward to but dilapidated school facilities, sky high tuition fees
and more students dropping out of school. “We are engaging the government
today to make sure that this would not happen,” he said.
On September 23 youth groups will once again march to Mendiola “to show
their rage against the budget cuts.”
“Spending on SUCs and education is an investment to develop our country’s
human resources. Congress and the Aquino government should rethink its
misguided priorities and realign funds from foreign debt, CCTs, and
military spending in favor of education and social services,” League of
Filipino Students Panay Regional Spokesperson JC Alejandro said. |
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State U
Giovanni Tapang, PhD
Prometheus Bound / Manila Times
September 22, 2011
From the middle of this week until Friday, various mobilizations and
community programs will be held in most of the country’s state colleges
and universities (SUC/SCU) to protest the dwindling budget allocation to
our public tertiary system. It is alarming since in a span of only 12
years, state subsidy has shrunk from around 87.7% to only 65.6% of the
budget of these institutions. It is also worrying since President Benigno
Aquino III himself, in his Budget Message this year, said that his
government is “gradually reducing the subsidy to SUCs to push them toward
becoming self-sufficient and financially independent, given their ability
to raise their income and to utilize it for their programs and projects.”
The president’s message strikes at the very heart of what makes a state
university a public institution. State support, in the form of budget
allocations, is what defines the “public” nature of our SCUs. Sadly, the
real value of state support for SUCs have been flat (at around 12.6
billion pesos at constant 2000 prices) for the past decade and per capita
state support for each student is dwindling considering that the number of
enrollees to public institutions has been slowly rising. As the price of
education in private universities (which is more than 70% of all tertiary
education institutions) rise, public funding dwindles for public
universities.
The flat growth of government support forces SUC administrators to rely on
internally-generated income in order to finance the operations of their
universities. In the past decade, some state universities have increased
their tuition as a response such as the Bicol University (from P9 per unit
to P175 per unit), the Philippine Normal University (from P10 per unit to
P50 per unit) and the University of the Philippines (from P300 per unit up
to P1,500 per unit).
The combined budget proposals of all SUCs according to the Philippine
Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC) amount to P45.90
billion in 2012. The budget proposed to Congress by the administration is
less than half that amount (P21.89 billion). The UP, as the national
university, proposed an P18.53 billion budget but was only given 31% of
this (P 5.75 billion) this coming 2012. UP would be getting less than last
year with a P200 million cut on its maintenance and other operating
expenses and P600 million on personnel services.
The UP Diliman Chancellor Professor Caesar Saloma has pointed out that
instead of a P 200 million cut, the government needs to add P200 million
to its MOOE budget allocation for UP in 2012 in order to maintain and
operate the National Science Complex (NSC) and the Engineering Research
and Development (ERDT) which is housed in Diliman. The NSC houses many
laboratory equipment, computers, chemicals, and specimens that are
fundamental in research and
development and is one of the most productive research centers in the
country. The ERDT consortium develops research and development in the
engineering fields.
The budget cut will force UP to shoulder this cost, or to reduce
expenditures. Student services such as food, transportation, security and
maintenance services are already being privatized in many SCUs. Auxiliary
student services such as organization tambayans and their use of
facilities are slowly being phased out by the lack of direct funding for
these. The cost of food and dormitories has risen in the past years inside
and around SCU campuses.
While scholarships and student loans do help some outstanding and needy
students, they are not replacements for affordable and accessible
education. The UP’s STFAP (Student Financial Assistance Program) from its
very start generated income instead of providing tuition subsidies. The
idea behind this program was to give students from poor families tuition
subsidies while asking full payment from those who can pay. Currently,
only 1% of UP students are granted full tuition subsidies from 20% of
students in 1991. The rest of the 99% either pay in full or have partial
tuition subsidies.
It is thus not surprising that eighty percent of our youth are not able to
enter college given that public tertiary institutions are now generally
inaccessible to the majority of the Filipinos due to
dwindling public support and exorbitant tuition in the private sector.
The government has to veer away from its path of privatizing public
education. Public educational support at all levels is a social
investment. We need to train our artists, writers, social scientists as
well as our engineers and scientists now so that they can be of value to
society later. That investment has to be given by government today.
It is not just a matter of increasing the numbers of highly trained and
motivated men and women in science and engineering if there will be no
domestic industries to go to after they graduate. With a shrinking
domestic manufacturing sector, these new graduates have nowhere to go
except abroad or be absorbed by foreign multinationals. Government support
for education has to go hand in hand with a domestic industrialization
policy to truly be beneficial to our country in the near future.###
Dr. Tapang is the chairperson of AGHAM-Advocates of Science and Technology
for the People. He is also currently the Associate Dean for Student and
Public Affairs of the College of Science in UP Diliman. |
