Monday, 11 February 2008

  • Press Release: Fed up of tuition hikes, students to storm streets today

    PRESS RELEASE
    February 1, 2008


    Fed up of tuition hikes, students to storm streets today

    DAVAO CITY--Tired of the relentless and unjustifiable increases in the tuition and other school fees, hundreds of students from various colleges and universities in Davao City walkout from their respective schools to bring their protest to the streets today.

    Makpil Zarrin Dem Camacho, University of the Philippines-Mindanao Student Council President, said the walk out is the students’ way of registering their strong protest against the government’s continued commercialization of education, a move that deprives millions of poor Filipinos to access free education.


    Leading the protesters are students from UP-Mindanao, University of Southeastern Philippines and the National Union of Students of the Philippines, including Ateneo de Davao University, University of Mindanao, Brokenshire College, Philippine Women’s College, Holy Cross of Davao College and STI College.

    The participation of the private colleges and universities are anchored on the fact that they, too, are affected by the non-stop hike in school fees. In relation to this, Ateneo’s official publication, Atenews, and Future Educators of Ateneo (Feat), conducted a forum among Ateneo students Wednesday to highlight the worsening situation of the Philippine educational system vis-à-vis the difficulty of Filipino children and youth to access free education.


    “The government’s commercialization of a constitutional right is unspeakable and deserves strong opposition from the same sector that is badly affected by it. The continued increase in the tuition and other school fees and the privatization of state colleges and universities is a pathetic admission that this government cannot serve the people…it is an admission of their failure and inutility,” Camacho said.

    Data from the Department of Education on the situation of Filipino youth is a giveaway of the problem that shrouds the government and its inability to deliver what is supposed to be a basic need, according to Camacho.


    As of 2006, only 66 of the 100 grade 1 entrants finish elementary and only about 58 are able to reach high school level while only 23 proceed to college. Of the 23, only 14 of them get to end up with college degrees. The same data issued by DepEd, under the command of former Sec. Jesli Lapuz, indicated that at least 1 million Filipino youth are unable to get high school education.


    Camacho also said that the rotten Philippine education is well articulated by the fact that, for the entire country especially in the countryside, there is a shortage of 30,906 classrooms, 30.6 million textbooks, 16.390 teachers and 26,282 principals.

    “These alone expose the neglect of the government on the importance of education as it nails down its priorities on war and other anti-people programs and projects,” said Camacho.

    Despite its being the premier state university in the country, UP students are not spared from tuition hikes and other schemes that turn out to be close in comparison to private educational institution’s expensive services.


    Today, students from the regional UP campuses of Mindanao, Visayas, Baguio and Pampanga are paying P600 per unit while those who are studying at UP’s Diliman, Manila and Los Banos campuses pay P1000 per unit.###

  • Choose Identity

  • Give eProps (?)

  • New! You can now edit your comments for 15 minutes after submitting.

Who recommended?