Davaoe?os who passed the scandal-tainted June 2006 nursing board exams are junking the plan to require a retake of the test, while some bewailed the government?s failures in the education and health systems as the primary factors that created this mess. Jeffrey B. Javier reports.
The government hastens the privatization or commercialization of state colleges and universities by lowering the budget for these schools, who are forced to increase tuition and come up with all sorts of income-generating projects that have nothing to do with education. In the meantime, poor students and their families are caught in a bind. Davao Today staff writer Grace S. Uddin tells us why.
Activism is alive and burning inside the UP Mindanao campus as students stayed up until dawn last week to protest the astronomical tuition increases the administrators of the University of thePhilippines system are proposing. Davao Today intern Melody Amor S. Nicolas was there.
The proposed tuition increase in UP ? at 200 percent — is staggering. It is comparable to the most expensive private schools in the country. It certainly is a cause for alarm for many students and parents.
By Grace S. Uddin
davaotoday.com
DAVAO CITY ? To many Filipino youths, studying at the University of the Philippines (UP) as a ?iskolar ng bayan? carries immense advantages. There?s, of course, the name and the renowned quality of UP education. On a more practical level, however, the subsidized, thus low, cost of studying there is enough motivation to seek a UP education.
Imagine, then, the consternation of many UP students when they learned that the state university was going to raise its tuition, making it no different from expensive private schools. To many of them, the ?iskolar ng bayan? label, which carries with it the rather lofty idea that the Filipino people are subsidizing good education, has become worthless.
The proposed tuition increase ? 200 percent — is staggering, and a cause for alarm for many students and parents. Late last month, students from all UP campuses nationwide made known their sentiment by walking out of their classrooms to march in the streets, demanding that the idea be junked.
Students were protesting increase in UM school fees, the absence of a student council and the continuing closure of the campus paper
