volume 37 special issue 1
J u ly 1 5 , 2 0 1 0
t h e O f f i c i a l S t u d e n t P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f t h e P h i l i pp i n e s Los B a ñ os Black ribbon. UPLB Persepctive unites with other member-publications of the College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines in condemnation of the Maguindanao Massacre and other human rights abuses. May these incidents be always remembered and condemned. Uphold freedom of expression!
OUS: IN glORi WORDS Voltaire Abiog GRAPHICS Trista Isobelle Gile LAYOUT Aletheia Grace del Rosario & Trista Isobelle Gile
Most Filipinos described the nine-year rule of the Arroyo regime as the period of worsening poverty rates, human rights violations and corruption. For the youth, it was the era that left some 339 tertiary schools nationwide increase tuition rates. Even though she has left for legislation, the youth can still feel the repercussions of her regime’s plans, which claimed to ‘modernize’ the Philippine education. Education: A Right No More The magnitude of tuition increases under the Arroyo regime legalized the transformation of state universities and colleges (SUCs) into semi-corporations or institutions that become self-sufficient for selling a product to accumulate profit. In the Philippine system of education, this product would be an education, which supposed to be an inalienable right of the people, bought by the students through tuition and other fees. The tuition cap, a limit set by the government, was removed in 2008. Seventy-eight out of the 111 SUCs had tuition rates that are at par with 1,465 private higher education institutions. This measure, according to Commission on Higher Education, is to ensure the quality of education for every Filipino student, for reasons such as “quality education is expensive.” Students of today’s generation pay high tuition and exorbitant fees, and yet the quality of education falls. The high tuition caused the enrolment rates at SUCs to drop. The result: only 6 million out of the 30 million young Filipinos go to school this year. Twenty-three out of the 111 SUCs are required to have their own mechanism for Continued to page 6
7
Nine years of education crisis unde r Arroyo regim e