A few weeks ago, the Arroyo administration declared a tuition increase moratorium on all State Colleges and Universities (SCUs) and discouraged Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs) from increasing tuition and other fees. According to Malacanang, this is providing relief to the Filipino people, given the current economic conditions that the country is facing. All these declarations have been found as a mere propaganda ploy by the Arroyo government.

Rising prices of oil, rice, transportation, among others, are part of the undeniable factors that burden the iskolars ng bayan and their parents. Notwithstanding all these, the students are burdened further by the relentless laboratory fee increase proposals such as those in the Colleges of Engineering and Mass Communication, despite the already implemented tuition increase in the University of the Philippines. More so, President Arroyo and her cohorts in the UP Administration found it fit to declare UP exempt from such a moratorium, as evident in UP President Roman’s Inquirer.net video, as though the UP and its constituency are exempt from the extraordinary challenges faced by the average Filipino family in these most trying of times.

In all these, the iskolars ng bayan need to understand that such pronouncements all ring hollow in the face of the seeming insurmountable problems facing the Philippine education system, in which the UP are among those that are being used as guinea pigs for commercialization schemes. We need to understand that the structural problems in higher education are rooted in the failure of government to appreciate the central role of state higher education in national industrialization and genuine economic development. Instead, the present government and the UP Administration slavishly embraces the entire neo-liberal economic policy imposed by multinational financial agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund where the abandonment of social services, like state higher education, is among its basic tenets. Such a policy has been crystallized as policy by government through its Long Term Higher Educational Development Plan (LTHEDP).

It is quite clear that the solutions being offered by the Arroyo regime are sham tricks and bogus pretense that deceive the youth and the Filipino people to make it seem that serious steps are being undertaken to resolve the crisis of the educational system. These are mere smokescreens to hide the fact that it is the government itself that has actually aggravated the already chronic economic crisis faced by the country.

Thus, it is imperative for the iskolars ng bayan to unite today and stake their constitutional claim to their right to education, by standing firmly for the rollback of the UP tuition increase, and the eventual junking of the UP tuition increase policy itself.

Rollback the 300% tuition increase, Stop laboratory fee increases! Junk the Tuition Policy, Fight for Greater State Subsidy for UP and Education! Oust GMA! Struggle for a Nationalist, Scientific, and Mass-oriented Education!