Higher tuition fees
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Higher tuition fees
- Language
- English
- Source
- Volume XIX (6) June 1967
- Year
- 1967
- Subject
- Tuition fees
- Education -- Philippines
- Education -- Costs
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- [A sound view on the cost of Philippine education.]
- Fulltext
- ■ A sound view on the cost of Philippine education. HIGHER TUITION FEES Education fees are going up. People are complaining. Private schools are under fire. We need a clear pers pective about the cost of education, the purpose of education — and the role of private education in this country. Everyone is aware that the cost of education is going up, and will conti nue to go up in the fore seeable future. The need to upgrade education is also a tvell known fact. There fore the only moot points in this higher tuition fees issue are on whether the tui tion increase will go towards the improvement of the edu cational system in that par ticular school. It may be just as well, for parents and students, to be more (Remand ing about the qualily of the education they are getting. There may be a misgiving about a foreseeable chance of a proportionate increase in educational benefits from a raise in tution. The fact is that a great proportion of the increase in costs has been going towards better pay for teachers who have been clamoring for adequate compensation to the point of staging strikes. The President and the de partment of education have in turn sought to scrutinize the present action of private schools. This is always good, except that government has always been quick to impose restrictions on private schools while being very slow with any kind of support. Most people have one misconcep tion. This is that govern ment education, or public schools, should be given allout support by the govern ment, but that government should be antagonistic to wards private education. This probably harks back to our American period when the department of education bureaucracy was built on a strong antipathy for the religious-oriented private school. The fact is that to day private education has assumed a function that is vital to the nation, one that June 1967 37 government has failed to fill. The increasing presence of private education in remote areas where only mission schools thrive or in higher education where a large pro portion of students are in privat* schools, dramatically indicts the feilure of govern ment to fill this need. NoW, an institution like the UP is subsidized by govermhent, and its quality is assured at a high cost of ex penditure per student. The citizens on the other hand are entitled to education but find themselves turning to private education because there are not enough schools. The government should con sider supporting the parent or student who goes to a pri vate school. Perhaps the tuition fees should be tax deductible. After all we are saving the government cost of education by actually pay ing tuition to private schools. Nobody wants a raise in tui tions. We should do some thing about it. But we should not take it out on private educators who are trying to improve education here. — By Alfredo Roces in Manila Times, June 28, 1967. 38 Panorama
- pages
- 37-38