Since becoming aware of the existence of the University of the Philippines (UP), I made it my mission to pass its entrance exam, call myself an Iskolar ng Bayan, and graduate wearing the prized sablay because that would mean I had made it in life. But before one could become an “Iskolar ng Bayan,” one has to go through the grueling process of studying for and passing the University of the Philippines College Admission Test or UPCAT.
It’s not a surprise that one of the issues that sparked debates all over social media is the call to remove the UPCAT. For students who dream of pursuing higher education without the price tag, passing the UPCAT is often perceived as a golden ticket to success and prestige. However, these days, it has become more and more evident that money still plays a big role in the admissions process, as it puts students who have the privilege to pay for review centers and focus all their attention on studying at an advantage. Families whose children do not have the innate academic capabilities to enroll in the very few institutions that offer free education are forced to pay hundreds of thousands of pesos for private school tuition. This privatization of education has turned it into a commodity.
The lack of free and accessible education due to the heavy financial demands and otherwise brutal academic requirements of educational institutions ensures that only the privileged can climb further up the social ladder and that the poor stay poor. This neoliberalist structure of education has given students an illusion of choice, as if the course of their entire lives is not already decided by the circumstances of their birth, and subsequently, the schools that they enroll in, the academic programs that they choose, and the jobs that they end up applying for in the future. Most of the time, in exchange for a steady salary and stable work environment, even the most idealistic and brilliant graduates let go of their dream careers and end up fleeing to a taxing and otherwise monotonous job in the corporate world.
This is ironic because, for a country that greatly values STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education to the point of establishing several science high schools whose students are overworked and yet glorified, one would think that a prosperous and high-paying career would await STEM-inclined graduates in the future. However, the opposite proves to be true. In search of greener pastures, nearly all of those in the STEM field end up going abroad for better job prospects, and not without a price. In the case of students under a contract with the Department of Science and Technology, such as Philippine Science High School students and DOST scholars, their monthly stipends and tuition-free education come at the cost of having to work in the country for a certain number of years, unless they’re willing to pay back every penny received from the institution. This would be a fair agreement if only working toward a degree didn’t cost more than the salary that it’s tied to. The same goes for arts education; despite the prestige of arts-related educational institutions and our country’s reliance on art-related industries for entertainment, graduates still end up having a hard time looking for stable and fulfilling jobs.
Instead of blaming UP for being unable to accommodate all of its applicants due to a lack of facilities brought about by inadequate funding and large budget cuts, there should be a focus on allocating more resources toward the establishment of public state universities that offer the same quality of education. For some students, UP is their sole choice because it’s the only top-performing public university that they know of but that shouldn’t be the case at all. In other well-developed countries such as Singapore, Japan, and even the UK, the most well-known and prestigious universities are all public universities.
Hea Salvador