Human capital

There is reason to be upset by the fact that none of our top universities made it to the top 300 educational institutions worldwide. It is a sad commentary not only on the state of our educational system but also on the quality of our human capital as we attempt to compete in a globalized world.

There is no surprise in the most recent release of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) list of the top universities in the world. The decline of our tertiary educational institutions has been gradual. We saw that in the annual rankings of Asian universities, corroborating the trend indicated in the QS list.

The rankings of our students in international tests for science and mathematics have been on the decline for years. This reflects the decreasing share of education spending in the country’s GDP.

Palace spokesmen expressed concern over the recent rankings of our educational institutions. They should instead translate that concern into concrete policy action.

Education does not figure prominently in this administration’s priorities. To the contrary, this administration has been harsh on our educational institutions — specifically, the reversal of this administration’s policy disposition.

The education budget for this year was slashed from the previous year, inflation notwithstanding. The proposed 2012 budget cuts funding for education even more.

State colleges and universities (SCUs) requested P45 billion for 2012. The proposed SCU budget for next year is only P21.89 billion, much smaller than the money set aside for the controversial CCT program.

The funding for personnel services has been decreased even as the salary standardization law programs an increase in compensation next year. That can only imply a cut in the number of teachers for these institutions and an even more telling outmigration of teaching staff. Salary levels in the public education system guarantees it will not attract the best and the brightest.

Not a single centavo is proposed for capital expenditure. That means the obsolete educational infrastructure will simply be left to rot.

True, money alone will not solve the problem, but lack of it will aggravate the situation even more. Education costs. If we are unwilling to invest in our educational systems, future generations will be doomed.

We are looking at an educational crisis, something that will drag down the nation’s prospects for many decades to come. Yet there does not seem to be enough political will to confront it squarely.

This is a crisis not just of the tertiary education sector. It is a crisis of the entire educational system, public and private, primary to tertiary. It demands drastic action by the national leadership and not just lame expressions of concern.

As a university teacher myself, let me say this: the universities cannot cure the problems of the primary and secondary schools. It is simply too late to intervene at that level.

The freshmen being fed into the universities are simply ill-prepared to do tertiary-level work. Curing the problem should begin from the primary levels, which requires many years to do. Since the vast majority of our pupils are in the public primary school system, the malaise ought to be addressed at that level, massively and decisively. That does not, unfortunately, appear to be forthcoming.

The DepEd seems bent on increasing the number of years required for basic primary and secondary preparation. That might be necessary to meet global benchmarks. It will, however, require massive budget support for new teachers and new classrooms. We do not see that in the money allocated for the primary schools. We are still grappling with ancient problems in the public schools: high student-teacher ratios, lack of classrooms and even inadequate toilet facilities.

It is, of course, not enough to simply increase the number of years for primary and secondary school preparation. The quality of educational content needs drastic improvement. In the East Asian region alone, we are competing with nations that have wired their primary schools, enabling them to deliver educational content digitally. This allows them to constantly upgrade educational content. Pupils are introduced to computers in the primary schools.

We are nowhere near that, obviously. Our pupils are forced to share inferior textbooks supplied by an afflicted bidding system. They are crammed a hundred to a room. The classroom shortage forces us to double up on their use, penalizing our pupils with terrible schedules that take a toll on their health.

Let us not even talk of school libraries, let alone facilities for extra-curricular activities. In most public schools, they simply do not exist in any meaningful way. I tried donating my own books to public schools but was told they have no space to put them in.

I was listening, the other day, to a party-list representative proposing a bill that will increase teacher’s allowance to purchase chalk. That made me very sad. We are hardly scratching the surface of the problem.

Some weeks ago, I was listening to an education bureaucrat talking about how particularly severe the classroom shortage was in the National Capital Region. While there might be money available to build classrooms, there is no money to buy expensive urban land for schools. Now that is truly sad. I could not imagine our poor schoolchildren forced to walk up high-rise schools with no grounds to play in.

This is the saddest part: in the past few days, when the declining quality of our educational institutions became topical once again, we hear nothing from our education bureaucrats. No passionate rethinking; no dramatic initiatives in the offing. No nothing. –Alex Magno (The Philippine Star)