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BY JOHNNY NOVERA
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NOW THAT a bill was passed in Congress for the free college tuition program of state universities and colleges (SUCs), there is the problem of funding it.
It would require a whooping P100 billion to fully subsidize tuition in SUCs, according to the economic managers of the administration.
The free tuition for SUCs was not included in the national budget of P3.767 trillion for 2018. There was no news of any veto from the President and so it must have lapsed into law on Aug. 5, 2017. The question now is, can it be implemented?
Actually, government data show that only 12 percent of the poor enters college. What more with the present change in our school system that introduced the Grade 12 level, which should already be equivalent to second year in college.
Government expects Grade 12 graduates to find jobs. Well, one can probably qualify as a clerk or messenger in an office and those who graduate from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) can engage in vocational work.
The danger in this kind of set up is that many will now falsely rely on their job and no longer pursue studying further. As an undergraduate, one can be doomed to remain a clerk or a laborer all his working life.
The problem faced by many students who go to college in the city is to cope with living expenses that can run up to 66 percent of the cost of college education. Tuition, even if granted by law as free, is only one-third of the cost of going to college.
Coming from an interior town, what we did during our college days in Iloilo City was to bring our own baon. We rented a room in the city near the college and then brought our supply of rice for the week with dried fish to match, and did our own cooking.
Later, it was good that we found work as secretary of a practicing lawyer who allowed us free board and lodging in his home while we took night classes in business. Because we knew shorthand and learned to write good letters, from the law office job we found work on our second year in college as secretary-stenographer in a commercial bank upon recommendation of our college Dean. In the bank, we later rose to become manager after we finished our Commerce course on night classes.
We are telling our story because having a college education can spell the difference. All we did when we had children of our own was to see to it that all seven of them finish college and this will be a very difficult job to do if you reached only Grade 12.
Now, to serve more people and guarantee college education, we have this idea that Congress should pass a new College Education Act that will require all employers to subsidize at least one child of their employees to finish college, subject to the condition that the beneficiary will, in turn, sponsor another sibling to do the same, and down the line until all siblings in the family get college education. This will prepare them for a better life compared to the unschooled or even if one will reach Grade 12 under the present program of our government.
We know of one successful feed factory in Pavia, Iloilo who implemented exactly this kind of scholarship program for the children of their employees. It was initially to do away with the bothersome practice of cash advances by employees against salaries allegedly for tuition of dependents.
The program later proved to be completely helpful and raised the standard of living of the employees because all their children finished college and later found very good jobs here or abroad that raised the standard of living of the family. (For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnovracompany@yahoo.com)/PN
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