Palace policy will make SUCs more expensive

President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s policy of making state universities and colleges (SUCs) self-sufficient is wrong since this would make them as expensive as private colleges and universities, Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano said Sunday.

The papers quoted President Aquino as saying the other day that government subsidy for SUCs would be gradually reduced to encourage them to be self-sufficient.

“For the SUCs to be self-sufficient, they have to operate like private schools. But 40 percent of college students are enrolled in SUCs precisely because they are cheaper,” he said at the weekly public affairs program, Balitang Todo Todo aired over radio station dzBB.

Cayetano, former chairman of the Senate Committee on Education, said that SUCs all over the world are heavily subsidized by the government. He added that the operation of the University of the Philippines, for instance, is getting a 70-percent subsidy from the national government.

“Self-sufficiency is for the private schools. The SUCs have no ability to be self-sufficient. Not all have commercial properties,” Cayetano said.

He compared the government’s asking SUCs to earn more while reducing state subsidy to a parent’s reducing his child’s “baon” [food and transport money] commensurate to what the child will earn on his own.

Cayetano had joined students in protesting against what they perceived to be reduction by more than P500 million of the budget for SUCs for 2011. Sen Franklin Drilon denied that the President reduced this budget. Drilon said that the 2010 budget appeared bigger only because it included congressional insertions for SUCs but it is not so when the proposed budget is compared to the 2010 budget proposed by the former administration.

Cayetano said that he saw nothing wrong with congressional insertions, which he described as mere amendments to the President’s budget, as long as they are done for a good purpose. At the same time, he maintained that even without the congressional insertions, the budget proposal of the Aquino administration for SUCs remains lower than that in the Arroyo administration.

Cayetano agreed with the decision of the Aquino administration to pour more money into basic education but he contended that this should not be achieved at the expense of higher education.

He added that increases in the budget for personal services of the SUCs are mandated by the Salary Standardization Law (SSL), and these should not be implemented without reducing the budget for their maintenance and other operating expenses. Cayetano noted that other departments’ budgets for SSL do not come from any reduction of their maintenance and other operating expenses. –EFREN L. DANAO SENIOR REPORTER, Manila Times