MANILA – Amid the haunting reality of student suicides, Pasig City Rep. Roman Romulo has urged the Commission on Higher Education or CHED and the country’s 112 state universities and colleges or SUCs to establish a fast-acting financial aid program for students in dire need of help to pay for their costs of living and schooling.
“The CHED and our SUCs should put up the mechanism for the quick-release grants, hopefully based on a unified set of guidelines as to potential beneficiaries. This is one practical approach to helping students facing extreme financial difficulties while in college,” Romulo said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
Romulo, chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education, said the case of Rosanna Sanfuego, a 16-year-old respiratory therapy freshman at the Cagayan State University (CSU) in Caritan, Tuguegarao City, has turned the spotlight on student suicides due to severe economic hardship.
Sanfuego hanged herself at their home in Abulug town on February 25 after she became despondent over her inability to pay her school and dormitory fees, plus persistent hunger problems while studying.
The suicide of 16-year old Kristel Tejada two years ago also magnified the susceptibility of financially distressed students. A behavioral science freshman at the University of the Philippines in Manila, Tejada, also took her own life by drinking silver cleaner after she was grief-stricken due to unpaid tuition fees.
“School authorities need to do a lot of soul-searching. College students are at a vulnerable age. Some of them can be easily overwhelmed by hard times, especially if they have nobody else to run to for help,” Romulo said. “SUCs have to assure indigent students that they can obtain immediate financial relief from a highly responsive support system.”
Romulo said the CHED and SUCs have ample funds to support financially distressed students, adding, this year alone the national government is spending some P7.7 billion for post-high school scholarships.
SUCs have a combined P3.5 billion available for scholarships. This is apart from the CHED’s P2.2-billion allotment for student financial aid. TESDA has another P2 billion for its Training for Work Scholarship Program.
Romulo sponsored the House-approved Unified Financial Assistance System for Higher and Technical Education (UniFAST), which aims to enable a greater number of college students from disadvantaged families to access state-sponsored financial assistance.
Now nearing Senate approval, UniFAST is expected to vastly improve the distribution of college scholarships, study grants, grants-in-aid and low-cost educational loans, he said.
Romulo introduced the Iskolar ng Bayan Program – now Republic Act 10648 which provides the top 10 graduates of every public high school with scholarships in SUCs. Romulo’s proposed Voluntary Student Loan Program by Private Banks, which the House previously passed on third and final reading, is now awaiting Senate approval.
But the Kabataan party list said two high school students from Cebu City became the latest victims of the rotten and commercialized, Philippine educational system. It said the duo – both cousins – had the same problem: their clearances were not signed therefore they could not take their exams because they were unable to pay the school dues.
“Far too many youth have opted to take their lives who can no longer stomach the suffering under the colonial, commercialized and fascist educational system. These four cases are a reflection that education in the country is not a right; rather, a privilege for the few who can afford,” Kabataan said.
“The four deaths manifest the overly-commercialized nature of our education. From tuition fee increases to redundant dues, the unjust spirit of commercialization dwells at the very core of our educational system. It is even reinforced by the administration’s deregulation of education through neo-liberal policies that are geared towards the abandonment of its responsibility to provide quality and accessible education to the youth,” it added.
It also slammed the claims of President Aquino about the country’s economic growth and decreasing poverty incidence and said the deaths of the four students were concrete proof that educational policies laid by the administration work make education a luxury for Filipinos.
“And as if the sufferings of students and parents alike are not enough in the current system, President Aquino plans to add two more years to basic education through its overhaul of the basic educational structure, in the face of K to 12. Aside from clear lack of instructional materials, facilities and personnel brought by the government’s meager budget allocation for education, the administration fails to see that additional years are nothing but financial burden to the majority of Filipino families who are already struggling to make both ends meet on a daily basis,” Kabataan said.
“We hold accountable the Aquino administration for the death of these students, for it is their incompetence that has led to the deplorable status of education in the nation today. Unless the basic problems of our society, which has put the nation under poverty, be addressed, the monster that Aquino pets shall keep on hunting the youth down, one by one,” it added. (Mindanao Examiner)
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