The cost of education

Consuelo Lozada-Fernandez and her husband Venancio devoted themselves to getting an education for their children. They had seven.  It was not an easy task. Indeed, reckoned by current tuition standards, it would have seemed an impossible task.

Consuelo got the worse end of it. Venancio died from cancer at 55. By then she was only in her late 40s. She was a widow who had been mostly a housewife all her married life. They were not poor. They owned farm land but this was a time when farming had fallen into a depression it has not recovered from since. They were not rich either.

Her children studied mostly in Catholic schools. There were times when she had to go to the school heads to request for postponement of tuition payments. These requests were usually granted. But that  was many years ago in a different time. Do school heads still grant reprieves from tuition payments?

Perhaps so. The situation might be different in state schools. But we do know that in the University of the Philippines Cebu, the problem of a student’s incapacity to pay tuition might find some sort of temporary solution if the student filed for a student loan. To get a loan, however, the student must have to find someone to act as guarantor to the loan.

There was a time when it was easy to find this guarantor. He or she was usually  a faculty member.  The guarantor signed a form pledging that a specified amount of money would be deducted from his or her salary should the student fail to repay the loan after a specific term.

When  tuition rates of the UP were still  modest by the standards of private schools, this system worked quite well. Some teachers guaranteed as many as three loans in a semester. There were cases when students  failed to repay their students loans. But since the cost of tuition was not that high, the student loans  were usually just  a thousand pesos or so. The guarantor’s payments were always spread over a reasonable period of time.

This system worked quite well until  recently when  tuition rates at UP tripled. Some argue that it should not have. After all, education is a right, not a privilege. The government should have increased its budget for state schools, and so forth, the arguments go.

The student loan system is still there. But it is understandable if fewer  UP employees are inclined to guarantee loans. They now come to as much as P7,000. If the student does not do good on the loan, the guarantor will hurt and hurt badly. Even so, some of them still do guarantee loans. But it is clear that some things need to be done to make education more accessible and humane across the board.

Consuelo practically devoted all her married life to educating her children. This came at no easy cost despite the fact she was never by any means poor. The fact of having many children proved beneficial in the long run because her older children would come to help  fund  the education of their younger siblings.

But it would be interesting to assess what might have happened for her if the cost of educating her children was not that high. She might have been better able to channel more of her resources toward business enterprises such as improving her farm. She might have been better able to contribute to the economy and its improvement. She might have had a better and more creative life than she had in the end.

She has since passed away. Her seven  children have since graduated into viable professions. Now it is their turn to struggle with the education of their own kids. It is still not easy. All of them must wonder how difficult it must be for others who earn less than them. They must all know that the true cost of education is not always measured in  money. It is better measured in the abstract measures of sacrifice. And then there is the concept of opportunity cost.

Is it possible the economy as well as our collective future would be better guaranteed if the cost of education was less than it is today?

Consider the possibility of more young people who are better trained at skills and professions. Consider the possibility of parents less saddled by the high cost of education. What might that do to making our economy better?