It’s not just the “quantity”

This is in response to the paper’s editorial, “Quantity over quality,” yesterday which discussed the plummeting quality of education and its supposed relation to the number of education institutions in the country.

The release of the editorial about education is very timely as the education budget is now being deliberated in the Senate. Nevertheless, there are some major issues that might have conveyed a wrong message to the public and to our lawmakers as well, which require clarification.

The conclusion of the British council about the quality of education in the country is already an open secret. However, its theory that the dilution of the quality of higher education in the country is caused by “too many colleges and universities” simply glosses over the fundamental problems gripping the education sector.

That “the 1,380 (it’s already 1,428 in A.Y. 2001-2002) universities and colleges all over the country provide easy access to higher education” is also a myth. The incessant tuition and miscellaneous fee increases since its deregulation in 1983 have made higher education elusive for the last two decades. In fact, drop-out rate in higher education is pegged at 73 percent based on the Wallace Report last year.

The “big” number of tertiary schools per se is not the reason behind the deteriorating quality of education. What contributes to the further worsening of its quality is the thrust of schools, particularly PRIVATE institutions, to create a lucrative business out of higher education to rake millions in profit rather than focusing on the improvement of teaching skills, among others. This was the same message of the Swanson report released four decades ago: that if universities continue to concentrate on earning money that educating its students, “they would be producing half-baked so-called experts and unimaginative leaders.” We see this trend with the influx of substandard schools offering nursing and caregiver courses and other programs over the last few years.

Appallingly, the article instead suggested imposing a “moratorium on establishment of new colleges and universities, particularly state colleges and universities.” The fact is, a moratorium on the creation of new SCUs, which totals 111, has already taken effect since October 1999 as a result of the Presidential Commission on Educational Reform’s recommendations. On the contrary, the total number of public higher education institutions in the country is also in a continuous decline, from 271 in 1996 to only 170 in 2002. These figures pale in comparison with the 1,316 private tertiary schools, which doubled its figures since 1990.

SCUs could not have been the favorite creations of national and local politicians, as the government has drastically reduced its budget in the last few years and its education policies even aim to reduce its present number by 20 percent in 2010. There could have been a mix up with the definition of SCUs and public schools as a whole in the article.

SCUs could not have possibly built new buildings and classrooms or upgrade its facilities as the government allotted no funding for Capital Outlay and reduced the budget for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses by half over the last few years.

To reduce the issue of the deteriorating quality of education as an end result of the big number of tertiary schools, specifically SCUs, is misleading. It only justifies the government’s thrust, in compliance with the prescriptions of international financing institutions, such as IMF, WB and ADB, to further reduce government spending in education and cut down the number of SCUs and leave tertiary education to the private sector.

The quality of education is in a continuous decline simply because the government does not give priority to education spending and its Commission on Higher Education just allows business tycoons to make money-spinning business out of it. This will continue unless the government reverses its present education policies.

***

Quantity over quality
Published on page A14 of the February 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

TWO developments have brought to the fore once more the woeful state of our education system: one is the finding by the British Council that there are too many colleges and universities that are "diluting" the quality of higher education, and the other is the renewed call to increase the number of years in basic education from 10 to 11 and even 12 in order for the country to be at par with the rest of the world. The call was again made in reaction to reports that among 45 nations whose basic-education students were graded in science and mathematics aptitude, the Philippines ended up 44th.

The call was nothing new. The Presidential Commission on Educational Reform during the Joseph Estrada administration had recommended that another year be added to the basic education program. But it is doubtful whether an added year to basic education would do the trick. Another year of elementary or high school means more resources poured into the education system, resources that may fall prey to the Pacman instincts of our voracious politicians. Big chunks of the additional investments in school buildings, teachers and textbooks may end up in the pockets of pork barrel-hungry politicians and their cronies.

Quantity, it appears, has a doubtful bearing on quality. This is shown by the British Council critique of higher education. While the 1,380 universities and colleges all over the country provide easy access to higher education-just as the thousands of public schools that congressmen are fond of establishing provide admittance to basic education to millions -- there's no assurance that the quality of education is excellent and responsible. Again, the question of resources here is relevant. As Gill Westaway of the British Council said, "In a country like the Philippines, where resources are scarce, it's better to have fewer universities with quality rather than allowing hundreds of universities that are diluting the overall quality."

Obviously there ought to be a moratorium on establishment of new colleges and universities, particularly state colleges and universities (SCUs), whose number has grown tremendously since the 1980s, and many of which have charters shielding them from effective monitoring by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). SCUs have become the favorite creations of national and local politicians. One in Pampanga was reported to have conferred more than a hundred doctorate degrees in a year, outpacing even much bigger and established higher institutions.

Why SCUs continue to grow in number despite the dubious education they provide has something to do with resources. It seems that politicians have found a new way to tap resources by building new schools, which also means new hiring and new allocations for classrooms, supplies and textbooks. Even Calamba has its own university!

How politics is killing our education system is very clear in the political pressure being brought to bear on the CHED to recall its order closing down 23 nursing schools nationwide. Several lawmakers led by Las Piñas Rep. Cynthia Villar, head of the House committee on education, met CHED officials and demanded they rescind the order.

The CHED, led by its chair, Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, O.P., defended the closure, saying it was meant to arrest the decline in nursing education, as proven by the decline in the passing rate of the nursing board exam from 49 percent to 43 percent as well as findings that nearly a fourth of nursing schools had passing rates of less than 30 percent. The order, in fact, has met acclaim here and abroad. Foreign hospitals that rely on the Philippines for nurses have welcomed the move, saying that the quality of nursing education should not be compromised for commercial-and political-interests. But the lawmakers, who two years ago passed the nursing law empowering the CHED and the Board of Nursing Education to do everything to ensure the quality of nursing education, insisted on the recall of the CHED order.

Could the CHED turn to Malacañang for help? Alas, there's no reprieve. Even without hearing the side of CHED, Malacañang recently ordered the lifting of the ban on a nursing school put up overnight by an influential computer school to capitalize on the nursing frenzy.

The CHED is trying to nurse education back to health. But our lawmakers and Malacañang, who seem to want to nurse their own pockets and shady political ambitions, are pummeling it to death.

Probe tuition hikes too

Our Senators’ immediate response over the College Assurance Plan (CAP) brouhaha is unmistakably commendable. Nevertheless, the issue does not simply end in CAP’s dwindling funds.

CAP’s unexpected collapse merely highlights how the cost of education, particularly in the tertiary level, has dramatically increased over the last two decades since the deregulation of tuition in 1983. The enactment of the Education Act of 1982 gave private schools a free hand in determining their tuition rate, thus paving the way for staggering tuition hikes which go on until now.

The financial difficulty being felt by CAP today only mirrors out the burden which besets thousands of parents every semester who always experience a hard time in settling current and unpaid accounts due to expensive tuition and miscellaneous fees.

This month, consultations on proposed tuition increases will start again in private schools all over the country. As early as now, several schools like PMI, UE, Adamson and FEU, have already announced their plans to increase their tuition anew in the coming school year.

Our lawmakers should not just end the investigation with CAP. They should also include owners and administrators of private schools who have incessantly increased their tuition and other fees over the last years. Our legislators should look into the financial records of these schools, especially those which consistently land among the top 1000 corporations in the country and rake millions in profit.

This should warrant the immediate action of both chambers of Congress to put an end to the last decades of tuition hike abuses against students and their parents and find truly democratic mechanisms to regulate tuition and hold consultations.

Our lawmakers must act now before college education entirely becomes an impossible dream for the Filipino youth.

Band-aid solution

The proposal of some UP professors to add two more years in the education ladder simply lacks careful analysis and realism.

While it is true that we are producing half-baked graduates in the basic and secondary level and increases the number of poorly educated professionals every March and October, adding another two years would be doing more harm than good.

Just like the flawed bridge program of the Department of Education, this band-aid solution does not address the real problem behind the deteriorating quality of education in the country. It is like giving medication to a patient without knowing what kind of disease he or she has.

Another two years would only mean more school expenditure for parents. And for those who cannot afford it, it would plainly mean early retirement from school.

Besides, where will the schools or DepEd get the money to run another two years of schooling if it can’t even efficiently operate the present ten years of basic and secondary education due to declining government subsidy? Without modernizing the present education standards, adding more years in school, whether in basic, secondary or tertiary education, would be useless.

No amount of reform, programs, or policies will uplift the quality and current condition of the education system if the government will not allot enough money for it.

This is where our taxes go

“This is where your taxes go,” as the giant billboards with full-size pictures of the President or some politicians put it. Now, amid heated debates over new taxes such as the proposed rate hike in the value-added tax (VAT), the government is saying the same thing – that the new taxes in the end will benefit the public as it will go to their basic social services.

Appallingly, while the Malacañang-controlled Congress is stubbornly pushing for more taxes, it is also seeking to impose the biggest cutbacks in basic social services such as education, health and housing in this year’s budget. The first one is robbery, the other one is murder.

The government is asking us to tighten our belts further and pay more, while we get less or nothing at all. The government is asking us to help augment the nation’s coffers long-emptied by misprioritization, inefficiency, corruption and large-scale plunder, while the rest of the Filipino people remain impoverish, homeless, uneducated and ailing.

At the expense of its own people, our government is devotedly following every dictate of international financing institutions and creditors in exchange for loans which only add up to ballooning debts that we never benefited from. They want us to pay more so that they can feed these creditors and stuff themselves as well, even as the whole nation suffers from widespread poverty and hunger.

Just like the projects that these giant tax billboards publicize, the government’s responsibility to render basic social services remain deficient, even imaginary.

Indeed, this is where our taxes go - to the pockets of foreign creditors and their local agents whose faces these billboards bear.