Tuition going up, education going down

As we were reading the newspaper a few days ago, one particular bulletin caught our attention. The news item states that an organization of private schools was demanding that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) lift the cap on tuition fee increases in all schools in the Philippines, arguing that this has prevented private universities from improving their standards. In a press conference, Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA) president Vicente Fabella stated that the improvement of private schools has suffered due to the constraints that have prevented them from increasing their tuition and other fees. Fabella, president of Jose Rizal University, further stated that CHED’s policy of limiting tuition hikes has badly affected the improvement of facilities and teachers’ salaries, which in turn has had adverse effects on the quality of education in private schools.

Based on CHED’s records on tuition increases, tuition fees have steadily increased by an average of almost 12 percent for the last five years. For the academic school year 2004-2005, a study of CHED showed that of the 224 private schools in Metro Manila, 83 had increased their tuition fees by 10.83 percent. In contrast, the quality of education has steadily deteriorated. Statistics have shown that our students perform poorly in the National Admission Test (NAT), underscoring the sorry state of education in our country. The NAT performance for school year 2005-2006 showed 54.66 percent and 44.33 percent average scores for sixth graders and senior high school students respectively. The students performed poorly in the three core disciplines – Math, Science, English, and also in Filipino and Hekasi (social studies, civics and geography). These statistics only show that tuition fees do not have a direct effect on the quality of education being imparted by schools.

We do not argue with the fact that schools do need to improve their facilities. Teachers, for example, can deliver their lectures better if they have access to better visual aids. The students’ reception of knowledge will perhaps improve even further if they are seated in comfortable chairs and in well-ventilated rooms. But schools’ poor facilities only play a small part in this perceived decline in the quality of our education. We must remember that there was a time when our country was once regarded as a leader with respect to achievements in education. Students from different countries were enrolled in our schools even if these were lacking in modern facilities. Undoubtedly, it is our system of education that needs to be improved. At present, statistics show that there are 23,866 lecturers in secondary levels teaching math and science subjects without the required specializations. In math alone, only 20 percent of these teachers took the subject as their major during college.

What our schools and universities need to do, therefore, is to channel their resources in improving the mastery levels of their educators. CHED, on the other hand, can regulate these tuition fee increases by instituting a merit system wherein schools and universities that meet a certain standard set by the Department of Education will get higher tuition fee increases. Schools and universities wanting to increase their tuition fees will have no choice but to improve their standards of teaching.

Tuition fees are already stratospheric enough as it is that it has become a burden to the ordinary Filipino family. Proof of this is the many high school and college students who are dropping out of school because of the inability of their families to pay for their education. If this regretful trend continues, we will be denying our country the opportunity to develop individuals who may become its future leaders. Claude-Adrien Helvetius, a French philosopher once said that "Education made us what we are." In our case, it will be our standard of education that will determine what we will become.