If UP and other state colleges and universities are becoming inaccessible, much more are the private schools. The DepEd has already rescinded its memorandum limiting automatic tuition increases to the annual inflation rate.
Poverty as the root cause
The decreasing government allocation for education is not the sole reason, and the only accountability of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration, for its failure to provide access to education to majority of the Filipino people. Its economic policies of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization which results in spikes in prices and rates of basic goods, services, and utilities, and increasing unemployment and underemployment leading to the worsening of the poverty situation is the biggest reason for the decreasing enrollment rates and increasing drop-out rates.
With around 65 million Filipinos or about 80 percent of the population trying to survive on P96 ($2) or less per day, how can a family afford the school uniforms, the transportation to and from school, the expenses for school supplies and projects, the miscellaneous expenses, and the food for the studying sibling? More than this, with the worsening unemployment problem and poverty situation, each member of the family is being expected to contribute to the family income. Most, if not all, out-of-school children are on the streets begging, selling cigarettes, candies, garlands, and assorted foodstuffs or things, or doing odd jobs.
The wrong solution
The provision of more training centers by TESDA is not only a wrong solution, it is at best a futile effort. More and more college graduates are not being able to get jobs. Much less are the chances of those who have only undergone vocational training.
The Marcos administration, during the 1970s has also tried the same approach. It instituted the National College Entrance Examinations (NCEE) to screen those who could enter college and to promote vocational training. It established the National Manpower Youth Council with the very same functions that TESDA has today.
It geared the educational system towards supplying cheap labor to multinational corporations. It also promoted a labor export policy supposedly as a temporary measure to mitigate the unemployment problem.
When all things failed, it tightened its grip to power and tried to suppress the growing discontent and intensifying protests by attacking the people and violating human rights with impunity.
Don’t all these sound familiar? Don’t you feel that we are in the same situation all over again, only it has become worse? Well, the Macapagal-Arroyo administration has a lot in common with the Marcos dictatorship, not only in terms of policies but it is also approximating the human rights record and the corruption scandals of the Marcoses. No wonder it seems so easy for them to strike a deal with the Marcos family. But if the Macapagal-Arroyo administration persists in pursuing the same path as the Marcos dictatorship, it will also share its fate. (Bulatlat.com)
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