By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
I intended to send this piece much earlier than usual, for a change, but when I opened the internet, I saw that President Duterte already signed into law the bill on Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education, night of Aug 3, 2017. Many of the points I raised in the original article were already moot and academic because of that.
Immediate revisions were therefore the order of the day. Result? Almost complete revision of the article and last minute submission! I have not read actually the law but from the press release of the government, I have an inkling on what it is primarily about. The free tuition is supposed to be for tertiary education in State Universities and Colleges, local tertiary schools (or those run by LGUs), and TESDA-accredited institutions. It is estimated that about 1.4 million students will be affected or will benefit from the new law. This, in itself, indicates the vital importance of the law to the future of the country.
The House version of the law was a consolidation of at least 59 bills filed earlier, including the one filed by Congressman Mark Go of Baguio City. The final Senate bill, whose main author was Sen Bam Aquino was somehow also a consolidation of different bills filed earlier, including the earliest one initiated by Sen Win Gatchalian. There were many co-authors of the bills in both houses of Congress. Hats off to all of you. You should be proud disciples of Jose Rizal who penned the obvious: “The youths are the hope of the fatherland.” You should be commended. You are, after all, showing some serious and precious concern for the future of this country and not only your penchant for theatrics in your endless investigations of anything with media value.
When news came out that PRRD had not yet signed the Free Tuition Law, many were duly alarmed– the students, parents and even the schools who had already processed scholarships of deserving students. But the bill had been signed into law although it will sleep for a little while before it will become effective. Now, the rough seas of scholarship had somehow calmed a bit. Question is, where will they source out the needed amount for the free tuition? For one, the RP budget for 2018 does not have allocation for the scholarship benefits. That being so, our economic managers were saying, before PRRD signed the law, that it will be difficult now to fund such important investment. That’s why others are saying that we should brace for even higher income taxes in the immediate future. Some senators and congressmen however have very positive outlook on this. They say that there are many possible sources of fund around. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that they will deliver.
The free tuition should be a boost to educating the youths of Cordillera. Many HS graduates have not enrolled in college partly because of the cost of education which is beyond the reach of many families. Hopefully, this scenario will improve tremendously.
With 7 SUCs in CAR and several non-SUC tertiary and TESDA-registered institutions, there are roughly 100,000 thousand students that could benefit from the new law, in CAR. That is quite substantial.
This free tuition might pose some concerns to private tertiary education institutions nationwide, as students might “flock” to schools offering such free tuition. They should not be alarmed though as many of the courses they are offering are not available in the concerned schools. Besides, SUCs for example have very limited resources. They can not just increase their enrollment without additional classrooms, additional equipment, and additional manpower such as teachers. At best, increase in enrollment in SUCs and other beneficiary schools will probably be only in the vicinity of 2-5%, including the first years.
I hope the free tuition should be equitable in nature. That is, those who can afford should still pay part of the tuition since SUCs are not easily given additional allocation for operations. If they are unable to get some amount from tuition, it is likely that quality of education will suffer. This will negate one of the intentions of the law which is to prepare students to be globally competitive. There is also a need to plan for graduates in the free tuition schools. If such graduates will just apply for jobs abroad, we will just be investing to benefit other countries. That is counter-productive.
***
The news that China is opening its doors for domestic jobs have brought some hope to our countrymen who can not find decent, good-paying jobs here. What I can not fully fathom is the gladness in the eyes, and in the minds of some government functionaries– people who see only the NOW and not tomorrow. We have been sending domestic helpers abroad, and they are prone to abuse. Because of such abuses, we are spending so much resources to find solution (if in the social media?). Can you imagine a DH who had been clearly abused, defended herself and unfortunately killing a monster, and yet paying millions of pesos as blood money? And here we are, not wanting to displease the host government, scrounging for that literally blood money. Yet we believe that we are doing a favor for somebody? In the process telling the world that we respect your laws, but trampling our pride and honor? It’s a national shame.
The job in China might produce a variant of abuse. For one, many of the Chinese are not used to having a domestic helper, many of them being a new rich. We don’t know yet how many of them will react to having a DH at their ‘disposal’. Also, with the tension in the South China Sea, the DH could be unwittingly used as a pawn, a leverage gauging from how the Chinese officials are acting. If I were in a position to decide, I will therefore completely discourage sending DHs to Chinese families in China. To send professionals there is acceptable but not the DHs.
What we need maybe is to have a think tank for job creations here, not a single person to be in-charge of such. They should devote their working hours full-time for jod creation and related matters. **
