POSITION PAPER OF THE ALL-UP ACADEMIC UNION ON THE PROPOSED   INCREASE IN TUITION AND MISCELLANEOUS FEES

The UP Ad-hoc committee to review tuition and other fees (composed of Emmanuel de Dios ,chairman, Rene P. Felix and Helen S. Valderama) have submitted its  17-page final report to the BOR proposing an increase of tuition and miscellaneous fees for incoming freshmen for the year 2006-2007. The increases, however, may be implemented in the academic year 2007-2008 if approved by the BOR. The proposed increase in tuition fees is as follows:

The current bracketing of students under  STFAP is given below:

The new bracketing (Table 1) is based on the self-reporting of family incomes by incoming freshmen for the year 2004’ as culled by the UP Office of Admission. This is presented in Table 10 in the report, classifying incomes of entering freshmen in 2004 according to deciles as compared to those of FIES(Family Income and Expenditure Survey).

                                      Table 3:(Table 10 of repot)          

            Source:Income-statistics from the UP Office of Admission, Family

                        and expenditure survey 2003(FIES)

            *Income of the richest person in each decile

            **Average income of each decile

The report contends that since the current bracketing(Table 2) follows strictly the national distribution of income, and since the actual family incomes of UP students are higher than those given by FIES as seen in Table 3, then the present STAFP is becoming an “increasingly inadequate system” (p.10) and hence must be replaced by a more realistic bracketing.

            The proposed increase in miscellaneous fee is P1096(average), ranging from P1,385 for Diliman to P810 for UP Mindanao. These break down to: (a) P260/sem -maintenance for internet connection(for all UP campuses); (b) electricity – P425/sem for Group 1 campuses and P250/sem for Group II campuses; (c) library fees – P700/sem for Group 1 and P300/sem for Group II. How the committee arrived at these proposed figures is only explained haphazardly in a footnote (p. 14 of the report) for internet cost, but not for electricity and library fees, which are arbitrarily given.

Justification for the Increase in Tuition fees

            The committee argue that since the ratio between the price levels of 2005 and 1989 has become 3.28 based on the CPI, those in bracket 9 in the present bracketing under STAPF whose families have an annual income of P250,000 or more and are paying full-tuition fees(See Table 2 above) would now have to pay P984/ credit unit(P300 x 3.28) instead of P300/unit since their incomes would have increased to P820,000 (P250,000 x 3.28).(p. 3 of the report) .But this is a biased assumption, based on an ideal “thought-experiment” which  postulates an intertemporal equity, and uses a clone of a student with family income of P250,000 a year in 1989 who enters UP in 2005.(Ibid.)  Such an intertemporal equity glaringly departs from the real world. In fact in the everyday world, due to the spiraling prices of goods and services, particularly caused by the incessant increases of oil prices and new taxes(specifically the new e-vat), the salaries and wages of Filipino families are being left behind by inflation, 7.7% by the end of 2005. The rise in inflation rate (from 3% in 2002 to 7.7% in 2005) has driven the daily cost of living (DCOL) for 2005 for a family of six ever higher to P650.17 (or P234,061.2/year before tax) in the NCR and to P534.80 (P192,528/year before tax) for the rest of the Philippines.[1] Thus, in the new bracketing proposed by the de Dios committee, those in bracket B with incomes from P98,169 to P182,239 and who are now going to be made to pay 20% of tuition fee, are living below the DCOL to sustain a family of six.

            The de Dios committee admit that prices have trebled between 1989 when STFAP was first adopted and 2004, from 59.3(CPI) to 180.8, 1994 = 100. (p.3 of the report) But instead of factoring this into the costs of other goods and services, the committee present this as an argument to illustrate how the nominal tuition fee in 1989 has declined in its real value. The committee contend that the real value of a full tuition fee of P300 per unit for Diliman and P200 for regional units would have decreased to P98 and P61 in 2004, respectively , and therefore there is a need to adjust tuition fees to keep up with inflation. (p. 3)  Surely, this is from the interest of the UP administration not  the students since as we pointed out the incomes of Filipino families have not kept up with inflationary rise in the prices of goods and services

..

If, however, we take foremost the welfare of families with children in UP, the increase of prices by 3.28 from 1989 to 2004 would now qualify those families with income of P250,000 annually for full tuition fee discount in the present STFAP. The real value of their income would have declined to P76,219.5(P250,000/3.28) and from being classified in bracket 9 paying full tuition fee, they would move up to bracket 5 with no tuition fee. Even assuming that the income of such families became P400,000 in 2004 from P250,000 in 1989, their real income would still be P121, 951.22(P400,000/3.28) and they  would still fall under bracket 5 with full-tuition fee discount(See Table 2 above).

            Compared with the present STFAP with brackets 1 to 5 exempted from tuition fees, the proposed new scheme has only one bracket (bracket A) with full tuition fee discount. Further, a devious sleight-of-hand done in the new bracketing is that families earning P80, 000-P130,000 and who are now tuition-fee exempted, would be lumped in bracket B in the proposed bracketing who will pay P300 for Group 1(Diliman, Manila, LB) and P200 (for other UP units). To say, as the committee aver, that this would be no different anyway from the current full tuition fee of P300 is the height of insensitivity.(p.12) The families of these poor students will now pay tuition compared to none before and that makes a lot of difference.

Pitting faculty welfare against student welfare

In section 2.1 of their report, the committee compare the costs of UP education with private universities, Ateneo, La Salle and UST. This section is obviously meant to win over the support of the UP faculty for the increases in tuition and miscellaneous fees. It reports that UP faculty receive less than their counterparts in the selected universities. For instance, while a UP instructor receives P7,098 per unit load, his counterpart in La Salle is paid P9, 954 and in Ateneo P7,600, though in UST the pay is a little bit lower than UP, P7,057 per unit load. The gap becomes wide on the professor level with UP professor receiving P13,686/per unit load compared to La Salle, P27,971, Ateneo, P18,600 and UST, P15,343.(Table 4 of the report, p.6)

            After presenting the above data, the committee then suggest that in order for UP to approximate La Salle and Ateneo faculty salary levels, the costs of undergraduate education in UP per student credit unit must be raised to P1,809.59 from the present P1, 531.11( the actual cost per unit to support a UP student, according to the committee) to approximate that of La Salle and to P1,644.25 to approximate Ateneo. Thus, the de Dios committee insidiously pit faculty welfare against student welfare since the proposed increases in tuition and miscellaneous fees, which to the committee do not even reflect the real cost of UP education,  may translate into an increase in faculty salaries as is done in private universities.[2]

Stipends for UP students

Anticipating the adverse effects of the proposed increases in tuition and miscellaneous fees on the families of UP students, the committee attempt to palliate its impact by recommending the raising of stipends for the poorest students in the new scheme from an average of P6,750 per semester to a standard P12,000 per semester. .(p.13) But this is no consolation at all since only 10%, according to the committee, of the total UP student  population will be able to qualify for stipends under the new scheme and the rest will either pay full or partial tuition fees plus miscellaneous fees. It is no consolation either for the committee to cajole that their recommended increase in tuition fee is lower than if they had used as inflator instead of 3 the true cost of education services in the Philippines, which is  7.125 %. (p. 7) An increase in tuition fee always results to an added burden to the already deteriorating economic conditions of Filipino families.

Conclusion

            The writers of the final report to increase tuition and miscellaneous fees in UP have indeed resigned themselves to the fact that the Philippine state has shirked its responsibility to support ,nay to raise the standard of UP education through a higher appropriation of the University’s annual budget. They have taken the principle of equity which is a basic foundation for the education of UP students to be equivalent to a market-driven principle. To them, equity means those who have more should pay more and with an increase in your income, the price of UP education should be made higher. But. equity is a social principle and takes into prior consideration the welfare of the poor and marginalized, and in state education it means first and foremost offering affordable education to them. In this regard, the system of UP admission should be revised and those with lower incomes given greater opportunities to enter UP.

            Assuming a market-driven university and giving up the need to demand a higher state budget for the University, the committee has resorted to an imagined rise in income for its clone UP student to justify a raise in tuition and miscellaneous fees. But this is how the greedy capitalist thinks increasing his/her prices if he/she believes that the incomes of his/her customers have risen. The crux of the committee’s justification for the increases in tuition and miscellaneous fees is based on a “thought-experiment” assuming “intertemporal equity”, a fictitious state of a clone UP student which blatantly defies hard reality. If the committee return to earth, they will discover how inflation in the prices of goods and services have drastically left behind the incomes of Filipino families, including those of UP students. It is not true that the real value of their incomes have kept pace with inflation as with the case of the committee’s imaginary clone student.

            It is unfortunate that with the present fiscal policy of the government which places paying off its debts, particularly foreign debt, above social services, commercialization has also gripped UP education. The rule now is  to each his own to survive the rigors of the market with its ever increasing prices of goods and services.And the UP administration is caught within this profit-making milieu and therefore look first after its own. According to the committee, if their recommendations for increases in tuition and miscellaneous fees are approved, these will generate “a net flow per semester to the University of approximately P53.7 million for each entering freshman class of 6,358(using 2004 enrollment data), assuming each student takes up a 15-unit load per semester.”(appendix of report) They further boast that this expected income is much higher than the current net flow from tuition of UP, which is only approximately P26 million per semester. (Ibid.) This may be the main reason why the de Dios committee came out with this kind of report which takes UP students as so many customers who have to endure an increase in prices of education(take it or leave it) in order to make the business of UP financially profitable. We shudder to contemplate that the next step from this state of commercialization is privatization as envisioned by our number-one creditor, the IMF. It is instructive to note that the original STAFP tuition fee increase in 1989 was based on  the Philippine government 1989 Memorandum of Economic and Financial Agreement(MOEFA) with the IMF. The 1989 agreement  with the IMF to secure a loan of $943.7 M for the Philippines, among others austerity measures to be adopted by the government to pay off its burgeoning foreign loans, promises to have government corporations,  like UP, to look for ways to augment their revenues, since their annual budgets will not be increased.[3]

            With the foregoing, in order to help alleviate the already worsening economic difficulties of families of UP students, the All-UP Academic Union call for the halt to any increase in tuition and other fees in the University. We call on the UP administration not to give up but to join and intensify the struggle to demand a higher budget for the state university through lobbying, petitions, symposia and other forms of collective actions by the UP constituency and their supporters. We should demand from the government that instead of giving precedence to the paying off of foreign debts, increasing the budget of the Armed Forces by P1billion just so it can wipe out insurgency whose roots are after all the extensive poverty of the people, and financing corruption (like the payoff of around P700 million for Arroyo supporters through the fertilizer scam), the appropriation for education, including that for UP, and other social services should be increased. For indeed the Philippine government has a sworn duty as embodied in the Constitution to give priority to the education of the Filipino people. We also call on the UP administration to conduct democratic consultation with all UP students through their representatives for any proposed increase in tuition and other fees. The stance of some sectors in the administration that since only those to be affected by the proposed rise in tuition and other fees are incoming freshmen for the year 2007, if approved, and that these increase will not apply to other year levels violates the very rationale for the establishment of student councils in our University. These students organizations have the democratic and bounded duty to represent all students of UP, whether incoming or old. To claim otherwise is to pit one student batch against another, contending their interests are different. All UP students are scholars of the nation and should be represented as one whole body. While we recognize the need to improve the welfare of the faculty and other employees of the University, this should not be at the expense of our students. Finally, our union vehemently opposed the growing commercialization of the University of the Philippines. We call on all UP constituents to join us in our fight.