Worthwhile investment

In a consultation with members of the University of the Philippines Cebu academic community yesterday, newly installed UP System president Alfredo Pascual said, among other things, that those calling for more money in the coffers of state universities and colleges should shift from denouncing a “budget cut” and call instead for a “budget increase.”

Whatever be Pascual’s motivations for engaging in semantic subtlety, the fact remains that the UP System alone, according to student groups, needs at least P18 billion to properly run its campuses across the country, yet was only given a P5.54-billion allotment.

UP Cebu, which marked its first year anniversary as an autonomous unit, could use the money as it expands with new institutions like a College of Mass Communication in three to five years and the UP Professional Schools in Cebu City’s South Road Properties for postgraduate courses.

Pascual did not give a specific time frame for the construction of the SRP campus, which will have a modern “green building” Asian design and house UP Cebu’s research and extension facilities and schools of business management, computer and continuing professional education. He said the university is still looking for funds.

The government, particularly the Budget Department now headed by Secretary Florencio Abad, appears to have followed the 1987 Constitution’s dictum that the highest budgetary allocation be given to the education sector.

In the proposed budget for fiscal year 2012, the Department of Education is slated to receive P238.8 billion and that is well and good.

The country’s 2,180 state universities and colleges, however, will only receive P21.89 billion or an average of only P100 million each.

A whopping P356.1 billion or 19.6 percent of the national budget will go to debt servicing next year.

Many budget items could be easily realigned in favor of SUCs if senators and congressmen showed more political will.

Last year, SUCs ended up with more money than Malacañang proposed after some senators pledged part of their Priority Development Assistance Funds in favor of the state’s tertiary education institutions during budget deliberations.

UP Cebu’s Professional Schools campus in the SRP will in fact be partly funded by the PDAF of Sen. Serge Osmeña who pledged P30 million.

Other legislators may as well go a step farther and waive generous amounts of their pork barrels in favor of SUCs, and for good measure, the national university.

Education is the best investment one can make in the best assets of a country—its people.

Now that would be a more worthwhile investment than a buffet of flyovers and covered courts in Metro Cebu.