Substandard

It is sad that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) so easily yielded to those hooligans who burned down equipment at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP). By so easily yielding to brazen intimidation, they allow our educational policy to continue on its politicized path to self-destruction.

The CHED announced last week that the tuition fee adjustment (not increase, since it only partially reflects accumulated inflation) will be withdrawn. The announcement was made after several days of rioting in the rundown campus that saw desks being flung from the buildings and eventually torched.

So tuition fees at the PUP will remain at P12 per unit. It will probably hold the record of having the cheapest tuition fees in the whole world.

The public university operates on a subsidy of P600 million annually. The adjustment might have raised another P50 million. A drop in the bucket really, considering that university administrators estimate the university needs about P2 billion annually to meet standards.

The past few days, university administrators have been doing the rounds, hat in hand, begging legislators for a share of their pork barrel allotments. They expect to raise P41 million this year from a number of senators and congressmen, just enough to acquire some urgently needed laboratory equipment and, probably, replace the stuff hurled from the buildings and torched by leftist militants exploiting a populist issue to the hilt.

These militants are clearly acting on cue from their handlers in the communist underground. In the same week they torched precious equipment at the PUP, their ilk attacked the offices of the CHED, breaking through its fences, and bullied regents of the UP with paint bombs. They are compensating for their small number by escalating the violence of their demonstrations.

Of course, the leftist party list congressmen donated nothing to PUP. They have fully deployed their pork to assist in getting their mouthpieces elected to the Senate and their party list groups winning even more seats at the House. If they succeed, they will get even more pork barrel access to pamper their mass bases.

On the same week Maoist youths were burning down precious equipment at the PUP and bullying regents of the UP, I chanced upon a television feature on the quality of technological education in South Korea. At pre-school, Korean children are introduced to computers. Education in mathematics and sciences are the best in the world. Quality engineers are produced en masse.

One shudders at the thought that our next generation of Filipinos, processed through substandard schools, will be competing with the next generation of South Koreans who are now topping every global test there is.

Our basic primary and secondary education is two years short of global standards. In fact, it is shorter by more than that. Our pupils work through a six-hour half-day session, further abbreviated by the incredible amount of holidays we observe. They plod through the educational menu in class sizes of up to 80 per teacher. In many cases, they share textbooks and will probably exit secondary level without handling a networked computer.

Everywhere else, schoolchildren put in at least 8 hours a day in a program that is two years longer than ours. Class size is, as a rule, at 20 pupils per teacher. Educational supplies are ample. The classroom experience is now normally supplemented by multimedia access.

There is a sound proposal on the table to add two more years to our primary and secondary program. Populist politicians oppose it because of the additional financial burden this will mean for parents. Education bureaucrats are reluctant to do this because of the logistical requirements that seem insurmountable as the moment.

So it is that, year after year, the next generation of Filipinos leaves high school grossly inferior to their counterparts everywhere else. Then they enter substandard public colleges that offer the equivalent of senior high school programs elsewhere. From anecdotal information collected from conversations with young Filipino professionals, it appears that much of their usable skills they acquire by learning on the job.

Under pressure from populist political considerations, we have emphasized quantity over quality. Every local political lord wants a state college in his district — usually named to honor an undeserving forebear. We have a proliferation of state colleges and universities, most of them without sufficient faculty strength, than our resources could properly support.

After the 1987 Constitution was adopted, guaranteeing free high school education, the population of public high schools spiked. Private schools lost their share of the market, a serious disincentive for private investments in education. Without a proportional spike in the education budget, having caught us in the throes of a debt crisis, spending per capita dropped sharply. It is easy to see, educational quality dropped as much too.

Proliferation of substandard state colleges and universities crowd out private investments in the market — in a fiscal situation that prevents the state from spending as much as is required under this configuration for next few generations. There is something obviously deleterious in this condition. It will limit the life chances of millions of young Filipinos for decades to come.

To further warp the situation, the nationality requirements in the same Cory Constitution inhibits international investment flows into our educational and information systems. That can only impoverish educational quality even more.

The unhealthy situation cannot be untangled with a single silver bullet. We cannot solve this abysmal condition by throwing a few billion more at our educational system. We need to build the teaching and institutional capacities of our educational system, consistently and smartly over many years.

That task is not helped by allowing know-nothing leftist hooligans get their way at every step of the rehabilitation of this vital sector. –Alex Magno (The Philippine Star)