Students of SUCs stage protests vs budget cuts

MANILA, Philippines—Students from different state universities this week started a series of protests as they demand that the Aquino administration stop shortchanging higher education through sufficient subsidy for state universities and colleges.

The National Union of Students of the Philippines said Monday that students of the entire University of the Philippines system across the country will hold a campus strike next week.

This will follow a “march for education” to be held in Manila on Sept. 23, where UP and member schools of the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges are expected to participate.

School officials back students’ calls for higher state subsidy for UP, the national university, with university president Alfredo Pascual himself airing the demand for greater government funding when he was invested into his post last week.

“From petitions for dialogues to open letters, we have exhausted all means of asking President Aquino for a budget which will allow our University to function normally without resorting to fee increases. It seems President Aquino is playing deaf to our entreaties for decent funding for our University” noted the student leader,” said UP student regent Krissy Conti in a statement.

Malacañang has proposed a P5.54-billion budget for UP in 2012, higher than this year’s P1.39 billion but still far from the estimated P18 billion the UP system would need to properly run its campuses across the country, per estimates of student groups.

This is part of the total P26.1 billion proposed higher education budget for 2012, according to the Department of Budget and Management.  The amount represents an increase of 10.1 percent from the current P23.7 billion budget, with some P500 million to be infused into the development of state universities and colleges.

Student groups meanwhile said the budget “contains an overall cut of P569.8 million” for some 50 state schools.

Some 220 SUCs will share the budget as enrollment increases in public tertiary schools amid rising tuition in private schools.

Students at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines also walked out of classes on Tuesday with university president Dante Guevarra to protest the state’s proposed P737-million budget for the school next year.

The amount is less than half the estimated P2 billion the school needs for the education of some 65,000 students, NUSP said.

“We strike back as we stand firm for our basic, fundamental rights and dignity as humans. In his administration’s new showing of its incompetence and absence of concern for the people President Aquino passed a budget that is largely unresponsive to the needs of the people and insensitive to our condition,” said Rommel Aguilar, PUP student regent.