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The
dictionary defines “tuition” as “a sum of money paid for
instruction [such as in a high school, university, or
college].” Its plural form is “tuitions.”
“Tuition,” in short, is the fee paid to acquire
knowledge and/or skills. It is by no means the only
payment students have to make—especially in private
schools that find sundry excuses to collect fees for
such items as “campus organ,” “laboratory,” “P.E.” and
“graduation.”
But
“tuition fee” has become so current that we now
seriously question the quality of learning of those
people who insist on using this grammatical abomination
whenever the debate on education in this country heats
up.
Part of
the blame, of course, belongs to the media—especially
those in broadcast—for popularizing the redundancy. Yet,
far too many public officials and so-called educators,
too, harp on the issue of rising “tuition fees” as to
make us wonder if they are qualified at all to discuss
the subject intelligently.
Nitpicking, you say?
If
anything, the currency of “tuition fee” merely
underlines the sad state of our system of education,
which has graduated lawmakers, Cabinet members,
teachers, militant firebrands and TV talking heads that
evidently are unaware of their regular lapses in
grammar. From tiny mistakes that people allow to slide
by come gigantic errors that explain, in large part, our
present national predicament.
Year in
and year out, the
Philippines
produces college graduates by the hundreds of thousands
who are mostly unqualified for the jobs they
subsequently apply for. A sizeable portion of the cost
of doing business in this country involves retraining
new hires, often on such basic subjects as interpersonal
communication.
Many
fresh graduates are unemployable because the schools
they graduated from failed to properly educate them.
These graduates—and the parents who financed their
schooling, such as it is—have been had. They were duped
into believing that after spending a certain amount of
time in the classroom, listening to lectures, taking
down notes and submitting the required papers, they
would be awarded diplomas, which would then become their
passports to gainful employment.
In fact,
far too many diplomas are not worth the proverbial paper
they are printed on—and we’re not talking here of the
bogus documents churned out by the master forgers of
C.M. Recto Avenue.
People
pay for the education they get. Over the years, the
debate—whenever the subject comes up—has focused less on
the quality of education than on the cost of earning a
diploma. We have been more concerned with getting as
many of our youth into and through the diploma mills
posing as universities than with the kind of education
they actually get to imbibe. As in so many areas,
politics is at the root of this misdirection.
Filipinos have come to expect the government to ensure
low tuition rather than quality education. Thus, for
decades, the authorities have strictly regulated private
colleges and universities, preventing them from raising
their tuitions to “unreasonable” heights—for which no
actual definition exists. Even after this sector was
supposedly “liberalized,” school administrations have
had to certify that the bulk of tuition increases go to
teacher salaries and, further, that such increases gain
the approval of an assembly including students and their
parents.
Even
more strictly regulated are state colleges and
universities. Once, these institutions were the pride of
our education system. Now—save for a few exceptions such
as the University of the Philippines (UP) system—they
have become the dumping ground of students who could not
be accommodated in private schools. Authorities insist
these universities keep their tuition dirt-cheap, which
would be just fine if the government subsidizes their
operations.
The
problem is that state colleges and universities often
find themselves having to survive solely on the basis of
the tuitions they collect from their enrollees. Even the
venerable UP has seen its physical plant deteriorate and
its faculty members flee to greener pastures in the
private sector, or, worse, overseas, because the
university does not have the wherewithal to maintain the
high academic standards for which it gained
international renown in the past.
President Arroyo ordered the other day state colleges
and universities not to raise their tuition. She also
directed the Commission on Higher Education to persuade
the private ones to do the same. While the Malacañang
directive offers some relief for enrollees—and their
parents—who are increasingly burdened by inflation, it
falls miserably short of fixing what is fundamentally
wrong with our colleges and universities.
One
major factor for the astounding progress achieved by our
neighbors in Asia was their heavy investment in tertiary
education early on in their struggle for economic
development. Now, we are in an age when science and
technology has opened up numerous opportunities, but our
criminal neglect of higher learning has caused our
country to lag terribly behind.
While
our neighbors have erected engineering marvels and have
launched into such specialized fields as genetic
engineering, we have become the suppliers of entire
armies of housemaids, nurses, construction laborers,
deckhands and caregivers to the world. We no longer
produce enough agriculturists to boost food production;
enough civil engineers to build and maintain roads,
bridges, irrigation systems and other civil works;
enough scientists to tap alternative-energy sources,
etc.
Indeed,
we get the education we pay for. |
