Abad exhorts state schools to serve poor students
The government has asked officials of state universities and colleges (SUC) to study, survey and profile their students to prove that their schools have been serving the poor in the provinces.
“If you don’t show reform, then there will no longer be appetite in the government to invest in SUCs,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad told SUC officials in the Cordillera and the Ilocos region during a special assembly at Benguet State University here on Saturday.
Abad, a former education secretary, said the limited funds available to the government have shaped a new policy regarding tertiary education.
Securing empirical data to show the degree by which state schools serve “their intended clientele” will enable the SUCs to know which of them could serve as regional universities, Abad said.
He said the government also needs to select state schools with skilled faculty and equipment to promote courses best suited for five priority industries—business process outsourcing (BPO), electronics and semiconductors, agriculture, infrastructure and tourism.
According to him, President Aquino wants the SUCs to define their strengths so those that do not make the grade as regional universities could focus on research and development or serve as community colleges.
The drain in the government’s education resources, which has been attributed to low-performing SUCs, has also compelled it to keep the number of state colleges to a minimum, Abad said.
“So I expect the President will sit down with the politicians soon,” he said.
Most SUCs were created by legislation. But some of them “should not have even operated,” Abad noted, given the state of government finances.
The government had imposed a moratorium on the creation of state schools, but “politics distorts … and weakens policy,” he said. “Some [politicians] are smart. They create a new campus of the same school [which would require the same expenditures devoted to the mother college],” he said.
Rafael Querubin, president of Ilocos Sur Polytechnic State College, said he had once tangled with a politician who created a new state college that would compete with the existing state school in their area.
“I suggested [to the congressman] [that we] just fuse his proposed college with ours, but he said it was too late,” Querubin said.
Abad said: “Philippine education is in deep crisis. This was the same statement I made in 2002 [as education secretary] … A good number of schoolchildren—about half—are not in grade school [which is free in government-run schools] … Secondary education is a terminal process for at least half of [the poor families]. They want their children back to earn livelihood to help support the family.”
“This means less than 15 percent of [our children] end the school cycle with a college degree and less than 5 percent of these graduate with hard science degrees. These are reflected today by [the performance of our] SUCs,” he said.
He said this scenario confirmed fears raised by BPO firms that the country may not be able to supply the industry with manpower “in the next three to five years, which would [compel them] to recruit from outside the Philippines.”
He said this could affect the economic momentum which the Philippines had achieved after it dislodged India as the call center capital of the world.
Local BPO firms are also edging closer to match those from countries that offer services like online X-ray analysis and outsourced animation, he said.
“Tertiary education is really a privilege” so spending money on state colleges must be directed to top-performing institutions, he said.
