Posts published during September, 2009

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September 30, 2009

We make the university, they make the crisis

Today the House of Representatives will start hearing the 2010 budgets of country’s state universities and colleges (SUC’s). We are of course, for the increase of the budgets of public institutions of higher learning.

Unfortunately however, many of the appointed administrators of state universities are resigned, even subservient, to the government’s policy of reducing government support to SUC’s. This year, the total allocation for the country’s 110 state universities and its almost 1 million students was slashed by P3 billion pesos. This situation, for the past years, has lead to the rampant increases in tuition and other miscellaneous fees in SUC’s, fervently implemented by its administrators. These have, in turn, made tertiary education in the Philippines increasingly inaccessible to the vast majority of Filipino youth.

This phenomenon of state abandonment of public higher educational institutions is not confined to the Philippines. It is a challenge being faced by many state universities and colleges around the world as an effect of a global free market philosophy that forces governments to cut on social services such as higher education in order to “balance the budget” and finance debt servicing.

A few days ago, thousands of students from state-funded University of California (UC) and other state universities and colleges in California walked out of their classes and protested against the budget cuts and the consequent tuition increases that were to be implemented by the state government. In defense of the cuts, the state government hammers the justification that everyone has to tighten their belts in light of fiscal crises and growing budget deficits. It is a rhetoric that is echoed even by the Philippine government. These belt-tightening justifications are nevertheless rejected as crises of their own making and as hypocrisies because governments continue to provide huge sums on questionable allocations and continue providing huge tax incentives to large corporations. In the Philippines for example, the government annually allocates tens of billions of pesos in Presidential discretionary funds that are immune from auditing scrutiny.

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September 29, 2009

Tulong Kabataan: More help needed by Typhoon Ondoy victims

Students are encouraged to participate in the concerted effort to help victims of typhoon Ondoy. They may drop off their material donations at their respective student council’s offices. Many of the universities and schools are conducting their own donation drives. In UP Diliman, for example, the centralized relief operations is at the Church of the Risen Lord, near the UP Chapel and the Shopping Center.

On Friday and Saturday, October 2-3, there will be a centralized collection of all relief goods at the Headquarters of Kabataan Partylist at 118-B Scout Rallos St., Quezon City (near Timog Avenue and EDSA). We will be needing volunteers in the sorting and the re-packing of the supplies. On Sunday, we shall be distributing the first batch of material assistance to several communities hit hard by the deluge. Assistance from youth groups and individuals is most welcome. You can contact me through this blog, and leave your contact number so we can keep in touch with you.

Also, here is an update on the fund drive being conducted by TxtPower. In a span of 24 hours, from 3:25 PM of September 27 to 3:25 PM of September 28, TXTPower received almost P500,000.00 for a grand total of P581,436.89.

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September 27, 2009

Tulong Kabataan: Help victims of Typhoon Ondoy, donations & volunteers needed

Filipinos now need all the help they can get, especially those hit hardest by rampaging tropical storm Ondoy (international code name Ketsana). The storm made landfall yesterday in Luzon, bringing endless rains and spawning huge floods in Metro Manila and many parts of Luzon. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are now homeless and an hundreds are feared dead. News of two more storms in the next weeks does not bode well.

TXTPower and Kabataan Partylist urges its members, supporters and friends abroad to make donations via Paypal. You may also donate via SmartMoney (5577-5144-1866-7103) or G-Cash 09266677163 or 0917-9751092. All donations coursed through the hotlines will be sent to the Philippine National Red Cross.

You may start donating by clicking here.

Donations can also be sent to Kabataan Partylist Headquarters, 118-B Sct. Rallos Stree, Quezon City (this is near Timog Avenue and EDSA). For more information please contact 0926-6677163 or kabataanpartylist @ gmail.com.

Volunteers are also welcome. Series of disaster relief activities will be held during the following weeks. Please leave a comment if you’re willing to help in any way.

National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) led the way and is now calling on all student councils to help with the relief drive. For UP Diliman students, you may drop off your donations and other supplies at the University Student Council office in Vinzons Hall. For UP Manila students, you may bring them to the College of Arts and Sciences Student Council office.

[photo above courtesy of Reuters]

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September 23, 2009

UC students walk-out against commercialization of California State U’s

Even state university students and faculty in California are walking out in protest to the present state government’s policy of privatizing state public higher education institutions, from UC Berkeley to California State University. Budget cuts, tuition hikes, limited admissions, corporate tie-ups, these are phrases that sound all too familiar to students from state universities in the Philippines. It is a reinforcement of the assertion that commercialization of public higher education is a product of a global free-market philosophy.

The budget cuts in California and in the Philippines take on very similar forms, as do their consequences. State policies (Higher Education Compact in California, Medium Term Higher Education Development Plan in the Philippines) declare that state universities should generate their own income from privatization and tuition hikes. Consequently, state funding is reduced as school administrators raise tuition and limit certain student services. It’s even worse in the University of California where salaries are also being slashed and enrollment/admissions are being limited.

In California as it is in the Philippines, despite gradual state abandonment of public higher education institutions, enrollment in state universities is increasing, students continue to flock to public institutions and their share in the total enrollment of all college students is growing larger by the year. The situation is more serious in California where public institutions enroll 79% of all college and university students. The share in the Philippines is 35% in 2008 (from only 10% in 1980). These figures should actually reinforce the policy of strengthening support to public higher education institutions instead of cutting subsidies.

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September 22, 2009

Budget cut in SUC’s means added burden to students

As the national government continues to cut down spending on the country’s 110 state universities and colleges (SUCs), students carry the burden of the steep cost of higher education, Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino said.

In the proposed national budget for 2010, allocation for SUCs will be slashed by 13 percent or a whopping P3.2 billion, thus forcing SUCs to generate income mostly from students.

Based on the 2010 National Expenditure Program, bulk of SUCs’ projected income of P10.2 billion will be sourced from tuition fees (P4.59 Billion) and other income from students (2.23 billion).

Palatino said “SUCs are being forced to rely less on government subsidy and more on internally-generated income in the form of tuition and other fees and privatization of assets. Unfortunately, the burden of financing tertiary education is placed on Filipino students, many of whom will be unable to afford it,” Palatino said.

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September 21, 2009

Budgets, budgets

The past week had been spent largely reading through the 2010 budget proposals of the government and its various departments and agencies. It can get frustrating and confusing, for someone who’s not used to reading accounting sheets and pages full of numbers. After a few days of flipping through the pages and scrutinizing the items, one will eventually get used to it. It is imperative, too, to look at the budget figures over the past years and at government policy declarations, to track the trend of government priorities as reflected in the money it is willing to spend on certain services and projects.

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September 19, 2009

State abandonment of higher education

This table shows the share of state subsidy and internally-generated income in state universities and colleges’ (SUC) total operating budget through the years. What is evident is that SUC’s are being forced to rely less and less on government subsidy and more and more on internally-generated income (in the form of tuition and other student fees, privatization of assets, etc.).

One sector which has always suffered from the government’s policy of contracting spending for social services in favor of continued debt servicing is the sector of higher education. When I was still in UP, I had friends who abhorred militant activists and the “leftist” slogans. One of the state policies they continuously deny is existing is “state abandonment of education.”

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Contracting social services, taxing the people dry

It has always been a priority for the Arroyo administration to “balance the budget”””meaning, to decrease the gap between government revenues and government spending.

In plain reading, this is good. Trimming the budget deficit should mean less borrowing, and eventually more money for health, education and other social services. However, the goal of balancing the budget under the Arroyo administration, and even before, has always been to ensure the payment of our debt obligations, unfortunately at the expense of social services spending.

To make matters for ordinary citizens worse, in order to balance the budget and earn more revenues, the government, for years, has always put a stress on consumer taxes (E-VAT, sin taxes, proposed text tax) instead of directly taxing corporations and high-income tycoons, instead of taxing imports or plugging the leaks from corruption. In the age of trade liberalization and globalization, government would rather give rich foreign investors, high-income tycoons and importers tariff cuts, tax holidays and other tax incentives.

Aside from taxing the consumer, government has also been selling its assets and privatizing services and public utilities in an effort to hide its poor and lopsided tax effort. This results to private companies concerned largely with profit and not with public service controlling public utilities. Thus, the high power and water rates we experience.

When corruption and smuggling comes into the picture, we arrive at the terrible fiscal decay we find ourselves in. Ordinary people are being taxed dry, and yet social services are continuously deteriorating, and despite all these, our debt just keeps growing and growing.

Below are some graphs that would illustrate the trend of the government in its budget proposals for the past years.

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September 15, 2009

DepEd should be reprimanded for ‘cutting classes’

Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino today lambasted the Department of Education’s move to reduce the number of class hours in some public elementary schools, saying that the smaller learning load will only worsen the already sorry state of education in the country.

“Last we checked, students are punished if they cut classes. This time, the DepEd itself is driving students out of their classrooms. The DepEd deserves ‘detention time’ and should be reprimanded for this proposal,” Palatino said.

The young solon said “While it is true that students are squatting on dirty floors in makeshift classrooms, this sorry state should not prompt our education officials to cut down the number of class hours. This will have an adverse impact on the quality of public education, especially since students taking national assessment tests have obtained failing marks during the past few years.”

Palatino also slammed the “integration” of subjects as it will only “confuse learners.”

“Remember that it is basic education we are talking about. Before we learn the connection between subjects, we should learn the basics, the fundamentals. Kung pagsasamahin ang mga subjects, hindi na malalaman ng bata kung ano ang pinagkaiba ng Hekasi sa MAPE,” he said.

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September 14, 2009

Lobbying through blogging

It was our simple “day-off” together. Some of my co-staff members and I, together with Congressman Mong, went to the opening day of the Cine Europa Film Festival in Shangri-la Mall. We caught the screening of Just Another Love Story, which contrary to its pleasant name, is actually dark and engaging Danish thriller film. Having watched it made me miss the days when almost all I did for school, as a film student in UP, was watch non-mainstream movies in class and write papers about them.

After the movie, we just had some snacks at the food court before parting ways.

Later that afternoon, I met up with some students from UP Manila who requested for an interview with regard to my opinion on lobbying through blogging and online social networking. Airah was also there to help me answer the queries. Our first answer was that, there’s no such thing as “lobbying through blogging.” At best, blogging is only a minor complement to a lobbying campaign in the largely traditional arena of Philippine politics. The primary force in the shaping of public policy is and should always be the mass movement. I conceded, however, that money and economic influence often contest this in the present style of politics that we have. But no matter how slick the grease is, once policy makers are confronted with “people power,” there’s little that can stop the tide of public pressure.

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