PUP students want bigger budget

Eight personal computers which are shared by 50 students, decade-old typewriters being used to teach students how to type and a main building that gets flooded whenever it rains due to a porous ceiling.

These were only some of the complaints that prompted thousands of students of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in Sta. Mesa, Manila, to walk out of their classes on Tuesday morning to press their demand for a bigger budget for the state-run school.

The protesters marched around the campus and went around the different colleges to express their outrage over the cut in the budget allocated for education.

Fatima Villanueva, president of the PUP Central Student Council, told the Inquirer that the entire PUP community was protesting the budget cut as she pointed out that the university was sorely lacking in basic facilities.

According to her, Tuesday’s unity march was part of a week-long protest where students, teachers, employees and officials  of the school were expected to participate.

The PUP community, she said, was protesting the P734.783 million budget allocated for the school for 2012 by the House committee on higher and technical education.

She stressed that they wanted a P2 billion budget that would address the university’s lack of facilities.

“We have four computer laboratories with 15 working computers and a laboratory [which is used by] 30 computer classes.  But there are at most 40 students in one class.  The students use the computers in batches.  Usually, the designated group leader ends up using the computers while the others only give their ‘moral support,’” she told the Inquirer.

She said that in the College of Technology where students shell out P250 per unit, 50 students have to share only eight computers which is why some of them end up learning about “keyboarding” by typing in the air.

Under keyboarding, Villanueva explained, freshmen and sophomore students are taught how to type.

She added that there were some colleges in the university where keyboarding students are forced to make do with typewriters, something that seems out of place in the Internet age.