To remedy the situation, PIDS cited various recommendations previously made by other studies, the most popular is to reduce the number of state schools so that limited government resources are not “spread thinly” among them.
This also means that everything pertaining to these schools will be rationalized like programs, locations, student costs, governance, and government budget support.
In the study “Efficiency of State Universities and Colleges in the Philippines: A Data Envelopment Analysis,” Janet Cuenca, PIDS supervising research specialist, said she also observed a declining trend in efficiency among state schools between 2007 and 2009. This was a major concern since any decline in efficiency would also mean a waste of resources.
“With only very few efficient SUCs as indicated by the efficiency scores, it is very alarming to note the declining trend in the number of efficient SUCs between 2007 and 2009. Moreover, the year-on-year average efficiency score of all SUCs is considerably low, which indicates a substantial amount of inputs that could have been saved if only the SUCs had operated efficiently,” Cuenca said.
“Given limited government resources, it is only appropriate to ensure that they are used efficiently to achieve their intended purpose. Nevertheless, wastage of scarce resources is inevitable, especially when institutions such as SUCs fail to perform as expected,” she said.
Cuenca used data-envelopment analysis to provide “empirical evidence” on the inefficiency of the majority of state schools in the country. She also used the “constant returns to scale and the variable returns to scale frameworks” to come up with solid results.
The study also stated that there was also a reform package, which focuses on changing the method for subsidizing students and schools. The subsidy must be directed to selected institutions, programs and students indiscriminately or inefficiently.
The reform package recommends the change in viewing some popular notions that higher education is for all and that SUCs provide equitable access to higher education; development of an operational plan for creating a critical mass of science and engineering institutions that can produce a target number of graduates (i.e., BS, MS and PhD) in specific priority fields in five to 10 years; and improvement of libraries and laboratories in target higher education institutions in all fields by developing a financial support strategy.
This also includes the development of a massive scholarship system for graduate studies in all fields; implementation of full-cost tuition scheme complemented with a massive scholarship program; and increasing the demand for science and technology graduates.
“With a number of useful recommendations drawn up in earlier studies, it is now a matter of identifying a good mix of these recommendations [i.e., given scarce resources] or strategies that will definitely pin down the long-standing issues and concerns surrounding the Philippine system of higher education. In the end, however, a strong commitment to really implement what ought to be done matters much,” the study concluded.
