There are those who say that the fight against budget cuts and the grossly insufficient government budget on our public schools, universities, hospitals and other social services is a campaign only of state university and public school students, teachers and staff, of medical professionals and employees in public hospitals, and of those who avail much of the government’s social services. They are the ones who can easily understand the need to go on strike in order to assert greater state subsidy for our schools and hospitals.
What is in it for us students in private schools? In our immediate interest, there is apparently nothing that concerns us. But you see, the reduction of state subsidy in state universities provides our private schools, which already control more than 70 percent of the country’s higher education system, greater leverage to control the “higher education” market. As it is, college education has already become a commodity to be availed of by those who can afford it and for private gain, not a right and a social service for national development as it should be. It is this situation of greater privatization, where young Filipinos and their families are left with very few alternatives but to surrender to the whims of the private sector, where tuition and other fees are exorbitant and largely deregulated, if not abandon any dreams of entering college altogether. This manifests in staggering figures admitted by the government’s education agencies—eighty percent (80%) of Filipino youth are not able to enter college or even technical-vocational schools. The point is, if tuition increases in private universities is something that concerns us, the fight of our state universities against budget cuts is also our fight. We need a strong public higher education system to serve as a counter-weight against private school owners’ free hand in dictating the control and orientation of our higher education system. The moment we allow our state universities to deteriorate or increase their rates, we can be certain that our private schools will have an easier time raising our tuition.
law student, national democracy activist, film school graduate, photography hobbyist