A graduation story

We associate April and May with summer heat, which can be uncomfortable but still bearable compared to the financial burdens that come about during these months, more so for middle-class families, in a sense creating a prolonged Lenten penitensya or hardship.

This is that time of the year when, after paying income taxes, families have to scrounge for funds to pay off end-of-school-year debts, so students can be promoted to the next year’s level, or even to graduate. Others are now finding ways to get funds together as private schools start enrollment in May.

When I was a college dean, I found myself overwhelmed by students’ appeals for late payments, or for permission to apply for loans. As a chancellor, I find that the appeals that land on my desk have multiplied many times over.

Then there are the students who are about to graduate but are saddled with outstanding financial obligations. Fortunately, as of December 2013 the University of the Philippines’ board of regents had enacted new rules that allow students to graduate even if they have debts. These students will still be held liable for payment after graduation; UP is allowed to withhold their transcript of records until the debts are settled.

The letters of appeal reflect our circumstances as a nation: the lack of job tenure, the vulnerability of small businesses, the many families waiting for delayed remittances from relatives working overseas. In some cases, the appeals can make your blood boil—for example, parents who start new families, abandoning their responsibilities to their first families.

The letters show, too, that the burden of putting students through school is not confined to parents. So many of the students who appeal for late payments are waiting for funds from an aunt or uncle, an elder sibling, sometimes even a grandfather or grandmother.

I want to share one such story of courage and persistence.

Fighting family

Last October one of my readers, Emil Climaco, sent me a long e-mail. He started out by saying that he had read my column about the student of UP Manila who had committed suicide. He said he was, like that student, facing financial hardship, but wanted to assure me that he was writing “just in case” something could be done, and that I need not worry if I could not help him because he had no suicidal intentions.  As I read through his letter, I could tell that, indeed, Emil was a fighter.

Emil comes from a large family; his parents are poor farmers in Bikol. He passed the UP entrance exam in 2002 and he started working for his degree in agricultural engineering in UP Los Baños.

From the beginning Emil knew his parents would not be able to support his education, so he began taking on all kinds of odd jobs, not just to keep himself in school but to get his siblings through college as well. As a working student, he had to delay his own academics, to keep his siblings

in school.

The last job he got was working in a call center, which brought in good money—a bonanza in terms of getting his siblings through college. But it also meant that his own performance in school was adversely affected.

Emil’s October e-mail came after he weighed all the costs and benefits of the way he was getting his siblings through college. With the few units he had left, he knew that if he went full-time as a student, he would finally finish college in one semester and a summer term. But that would mean giving up his job, and he was worried that his siblings’ schooling would then be interrupted.

He asked if I could help him get financial support. I arranged for an interview with him, and we met in Laguna, close to the call center where he was working. As my kids ran around, Emil gave me details of the work he had been doing, including catering, even singing.

Enrollment had actually started by the time we talked, and I told him it was not going to be easy getting funds. But in the end I found a way to get him a loan.

P140,000

And so Emil and his siblings did survive, even with Emil going full-time as a student. His sister Sheryl graduated from the Laguna State Polytechnic University (LSPU) two weeks ago with a bachelor’s degree in education—the second in their family to get a college degree. The first one was Christian, who completed his agro-fisheries course in 2012, also at LSPU. Another brother was studying criminology but had to stop after the second year because of an accident.

A sister, Maria Grace, is still in college: a sophomore in agricultural economics at UP Los Baños. Emil himself will graduate this summer, and is eager to get his diploma and get back to work so he can begin to pay off his loan.

Emil had borrowed P140,000, which covered his and his two siblings’ second-semester tuition and their living expenses over six months. In many Philippine private schools, that amount would cover only a year’s tuition in grade school or high school.

We know, too, that there are families that will splurge more than P140,000 to celebrate one child’s graduation.

I mentioned earlier that the difficulties around college school fees are more of a middle-class affliction. With a few exceptions, the poor can’t even get to college. For that minority, and the middle-class youth who are able to at least get into college, the situation is precarious because jobs and businesses are so unstable.

Emil and his siblings are certainly to be commended for being committed to working against all odds, but I can’t help but wonder: Don’t they deserve better, Emil and all the other students who sent in letters appealing for late payment and for graduation? A college education is a lifeline, a way out of poverty, but getting through college actually puts families in harm’s way—risking being plunged into poverty.

Why must our summers be so penitential?

(E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)