AU slammed for ousting professor

Rise For Education Alliance-Metro Manila joins the Adamson University Faculty and Employees Association (Aufea), its students and the Vincentian community in their call for the reinstatement of Aufea president Prof. Orestes delos Reyes Jr., the scrapping of the K-to-12 program and a stop to tuition and other fee increases.

Delos Reyes’ dismissal is nothing but a ploy by the Adamson University (AU) administration to dissuade faculty members and employees opposed to the K-to-12 program. Aufea is including the demand for the suspension of the K-to-12 in their collective bargaining agreement come March 2015. Some 85,000 faculty members across the country will be losing their jobs as a result of the implementation of the program, the Aquino administration’s flagship education program.

If the program will cause such massive layoff, why is the Adamson University administration pushing through with it?

Since 2011, the administration has consistently hiked tuition as well as the miscellaneous school fees from 10 percent to 15 percent annually. Apart from this, it has been implementing repressive and mandatory policies that guarantee profits, such as the “No permit, no exam policy” and the “No P10,000 down payment, no subject reservation policy.” Despite these fee hikes and policies, the administration has not fulfilled the incremental proceeds system allocating 70 percent of the collected fees to increase the salaries of the faculty and employees. Instead of protecting the welfare of its employees, Adamson University is repressing and laying them off.

These are the profit-ensuring tactics of private higher education institutions across the country, which prioritize dividends over the democratic rights of their respective communities, literally at the expense of the students and parents who are being milked dry through skyrocketing tuition increases and collection schemes. Like the faculty and employees, the students are also consistent victims of repression by college and university administrations that curtail their freedom of expression and assembly, and their right to organize, among other rights.

All these under the framework of the neoliberal policies on education imposed by the Aquino administration and carried out by capitalist educators—like deregulation, liberalization, privatization and denationalization, all meant to satisfy the obsession of domestic and foreign corporations for greater profit. A deregulated education system, whose curriculum answers the need of businessmen for cheap labor and contractual employees, is good for capitalists but detrimental to the people.

But we should not be deterred by these acts of injustice from asserting our basic rights; history has taught us that by our collective action, we will be victorious in our struggles. It is high time that the students, faculty, employees and the Vincentian community united for the advancement of our rights to education and decent work, and to a society that provides education for the socially disadvantaged.

—RECHIL PAGLINAWAN,

spokesperson,

Rise for Education Alliance

Metro Manila,

[email protected]