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PROBLEMS ON THE PHILIPPINE EDUCATION SYSTEM—COLLEGE

TUITION AND OTHER FEES INCREASE
There is a problem on the commercialization of education through the continuing increase of
tuition and education becoming more expensive. Private school raising their fees is justifiable
but the question lies now on the justification and appropriation of the fees collected.
ARTICLES RELATED TO THE PROBLEM:
It is a cruel paradox that a college education helps to escape poverty, but Filipinos have to be
rich to afford one. Furthermore, those who do manage to go to college run the risk that the
education they pay for may turn out to be sub-standard or defective.
Critics say the root of the problem is that Philippines’ system of higher education follows the
American model. Most universities and colleges are private and profit-driven. JC Tejano, the
national spokesperson of the Student Council Alliance of the Philippines (SCAP), says: “All
schools want to do is earn money.” In the SCAP’s view, they do far too little to ensure quality.
According to government data, there are 2,247 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the
Philippines, and 88% of them are private colleges and universities. Of the country’s 2.9 million
higher education students, 1.74 million (60%) are enrolled in private schools. Though they are
smaller in number, public HEIs tend to be crowded, underfunded and overstretched.
COST ISSUES
The government’s Council on Higher Education (CHED) currently estimates that, on the
average, a student in a private school will pay 237,600 pesos (€ 4,200) for a four-year course.
On average, however, public schools, are not much cheaper. The CHED reckons that tuition for a
complete four-year course will cost 233,600 pesos.
At a top tier university, however, the costs will amount to 400,000 pesos. The best and most
expensive schools are in the private sector – but that is equally true for the worst and cheapest
ones.
Compared with what a typical Filipino household earns, the costs of higher education are stiff.
According to the official Philippines’ 2009 Family Income and Expenditure Survey, the average
family’s annual income is a mere 206,000 pesos. The survey notes that for the families in the
bottom 30%, the average is only 62,000 pesos.
HEIs tend to increase tuition every year. In the Philippines, college subjects are taught in small
“units”. In 2005, according to the online magazine Bulatlat, the average cost per unit was more
than 330 pesos. By 2011, the average tuition per unit had risen to more than 500 pesos.
Tuition isn’t the only financial worry of college students of course. The CHED figures do not
include board, lodging, transportation and other expenses. These are not trifling outlays. For
example, professors tell stories of students skipping classes because they cannot pay for
transportation to go to school; there have also been reports of students who can’t focus because
they’re weak from not having eaten properly.
Aggravating matters, HEIs are creative in devising ways of padding their bills. Among other
things, they levy fees for “laboratories”, “energy” and “development”. Last year, Antonio Pascua
Jr., an official of the youth group Anakbayan, claimed one school was charging a “restricted fee”,
the purpose of which was not clear to students. He says this is “completely baffling”.
Patricia Licuanan, the CHED chairperson, wants “all HEIs to carefully study their tuition and fee
increases each year”. On behalf of the government, she insists that every HEI should “spend
wisely and judiciously in order to lessen the costs to its most important stakeholders – its
students”
The sad truth, however, is that many students discover at some point or another that they are no
longer able to afford tuition and drop out of the HEI they have been attending. They either stop
studying altogether or transfer to a cheaper HEI. The new schools are worse, of course, but they
are also in the habit of increasing fees.
In 2005, the Bulatlat report stated the dropout rate was as high as 73%. Today, student leader
Tejano demands a freeze on tuition and other fees. His organization wants the burden on
ordinary people to decrease.
It also wants to ensure that more youngsters get a good education.
Private HEIs respond by saying they have to raise tuition fees or go bankrupt. CHED’s Licuana
agrees and says that “quality education has a price”. She points out costs for faculty salaries,
laboratories, equipment et cetera. Therefore, she argues, tuition hikes are “necessary”. At the
same time she wants them to be “justified, reasonable and transparent”
Reference:
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/expensive-notalways-worth-much-higher-education-
philippines
Many people see public college education as a great “equalizer” of Philippine society: a system
that can help reduce the gaps between the richest and poorest Filipinos. But as things stand,
SUCs are inequitable and accessed more by the richest students than the poorest.
There’s no denying that high tuition fees are an important barrier in SUC education. But rather
than just subsidize tuition fees, our lawmakers should address “accessibility” in a much broader
sense. That is, they should aim at the problems faced by poor students as early as their
elementary and high school years, not when they are already in college.
If we fail to adequately tackle these early disadvantages, then free tuition fees will do little to
make public college education the “equalizer” we all hope it to be.
Reference:
http://rappler.com
SALARY OF TEACHERS
The salaries of teachers can never compensate for the high demands of their calling. Voluminous
paperwork that takes so much of the teachers’ time, denying them opportunities to spend
quality time at home, issues on delayed salaries, salary increments, chalk allowance, clothing
allowance, etc. persist, even in the city. How much more for teachers in the provinces and rural
areas?
The low of salary for the teachers "demoralizes" them. "If you want the best minds to teach, you
must give good salary to them." even though President Benigno Aquino III said that there are no
budget to raise the salaries of the teacher. Salgado said there are adequate funds but that there is
misappropriation like the P10 billion Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF)
controversy.
"We do not have much money in the world, but it could be done by the government.”
ARTICLES RELATED TO THE PROBLEM:
Teaching has often been referred to as the “most notable of all professions.” Many teachers,
however, the noble image of their profession has been transformed into an illusion. Over the last
three decades, we have come to think of the Filipino teachers as overworked and underpaid
professionals.
The fact that teachers are paid subsistence wages is only half of their sad story. Their daily bout
with dilapidated classrooms, overcrowded classes, and lack of teaching materials, among others,
make the teachers hardly rewarded work even more difficult.
Aside from classroom instructions, teachers perform a host of backbreaking and time-
consuming jobs unrelated to the teaching function. The National Research and Development
Center for Teacher Education under the DECS listed 76 extracurricular activities performed by
public school teachers.
Such activities include Operation Timbang, census taking, tax consciousness drive, Clean and
Green Drive, Alay-Tanim, Alay-Lakad, fundraising campaigns, lining the streets to welcome
foreign dignitaries, etc. To do all these, teachers are forced to work two or three hours overtime
every day. They also have to report during weekends and holidays and even during their yearly
vacation time.
Reference:
https://www.imbalife.com/7-key-issues-and-problems-of-philippine-education
Teachers' Salary in the Philippines Must Be Upgraded to Solve Problems in Basic Education
Copied from NCSU team one's "Maybe Teachers do Need More Pay?" Teacher quality is decided
by how society treats the profession. There is ample research that shows why teachers’ salaries
play a major role in educating children. There is a lot of noise clouding education reform so it is
only necessary to make this point louder and clearer. Quality education is not possible if
teachers are treated without respect. A teacher cannot possibly dedicate fully his or her attention
to students if day to day survival remains an issue. Here, I reiterate evidence of why attention to
teachers’ conditions is key to improving basic education in the Philippines.
TEACHERS' SALARIES
Studies show that an elementary school Finnish teacher earns $48 per hour of instruction while
in Israel the pay is $18 per hour. In high school, a teacher in Finland receives $79 per hour while
an Israeli teacher makes $27. Teachers in Israel also work longer hours than teachers in
Finland, 54% more in elementary and 25% more in high school.
We can compare the above with how the Philippine government has been treating its teachers
especially the kindergarten volunteers. These teachers are paid about less than $2 per hour. We
will definitely get what we pay for.
In another post, "How Much Should Teachers Be Paid", the following thoughts from the Teacher
Salary Project in the United States were cited:
Though it is well documented that the most important school-based factor in students' academic
achievement and future success is the quality of their teachers, 46% of public school teachers
leave the profession within the first five years of being in the classroom. Salaries and stress are
among the top reasons teachers say they leave.
Research has shown that the top-performing school systems in the world all share one
consistent feature: top-performing teachers. In the next five years, almost two million teachers
will retire. By following four feature teachers as they reach different milestones in their careers,
our film tells the deeper story of the teaching profession in America today, and what we can do
to invest in it for tomorrow. It is our hope that American Teacher will engage, challenge, and
inspire audiences to be part of an urgently needed progressive social movement, resulting in a
real and lasting impact on the lives of our nation’s children.
It goes to show that even in the United States, teachers' salaries are also problematic. Teachers
in the Philippines, however, receive so much less while their class sizes are so much larger. The
teaching profession has been treated harshly that it even fails to attract the necessary talent.
Teachers are in fact looking for better opportunities and in another post, "Filipino Teachers in
Maryland" the plight of Philippine teachers in the United States was described:
Teaching abroad is an attractive option for many Filipino teachers, who stand to earn as much
as 25 times their standard salaries in the Philippines. In Baltimore, which has been actively
recruiting in the Philippines since 2005, Filipino teachers earn as much as $45,000 a year, as
compared to an average of $3,500 earned for teaching public school in the Philippines (and
slightly more for teaching private school).
Hopefully, these Filipino teachers will not be "exploited" in these SE charter schools, especially
because charter schools have no unions to protect them. These "DC charter schools' Filipino
teachers" also came yesterday (they were late), and shared that they work in their schools from 7
am to 7 pm.
Some of them cried while sharing their recent teaching experiences in teaching young children
in these charter schools. They said that the children are so "rough".
One teacher shared that she was hit by a 2nd grader with a chair.
The teachers said they just persevere because of their desire to secure their visa status and to be
able to continue to provide for their families back in the Philippines."
Should Teachers Fight for Higher Salaries?
A recent meeting held at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati that recently addressed
the "poor quality" of teaching in the Philippines. Some focused on the licensure exam - as if an
exam could really define the quality of teaching. Some looked at the grades of high school
graduates entering the teaching schools. Some even provided evidence that people who have
finished a college degree before going into a teacher education program were more effective.
One person, however, Dr. Cris Acido of the University of the Philippines College of Education,
was quoted as saying:
“We don’t get the best minds because of the status we have given the teaching profession. Giving
higher salaries could be a move in the right direction."
This opinion given by Acido is in fact based on evidence.
"Overall, the really big challenge in the Philippines is how there is such a knowledge and cultural
distance between the elites and the poor. If you ask me what our biggest role is, it is a bridge
across those gaps. The biggest solutions will only come from our next generation of leaders who
will have a better feel for the poverty in the country. People in power have tended to take
simplistic approaches to the poverty – consider the businessmen who seek an improvement to
our struggling public schools by adding two years to the curriculum. My point is, ‘700 thousand
students drop out before grade six, and 1.2 million do not finish the current high school
curriculum.’ Solutions like getting more computers or adding years of school won’t work for
these student dropouts. Our challenge becomes connecting these leaders with the actual
problems the poor have."
The teachers have been telling us for so long now what their problems are, but we are not
listening. Instead, we push our own ideas, our own reforms. When will we ever learn?
Reference:
http://www.philippinesbasiceducation.us/2014/05/teachers-salary-in-philippines-must-
be.html

QUALITY OF EDUCATION
ARTICLES RELATED TO THE PROBLEM:
Quality concerns
Apart from the cost of education there is also the matter of quality. Among the private HEIs,
there is a handful of top tier universities. Their graduates can probably compete with those of
other elite schools around the world. Most other private-sector HEIs, however, basically seem to
seek profits at the expense of substance.
A university faculty member, who asks not to be identified, says: “Some of them shouldn’t even
be schools at all – there’s a proliferation of HEIs which are not qualified.” This educator speaks
of fly-by-night operations” and “diploma mills”. While some do not charge high tuition, their
quality is below standard.
Other teachers, who decline to be identified, tell disturbing stories too. One school, for instance,
does not stock books in its library because its president argues that books are obsolete and
everything can be downloaded from the Internet. A few semesters ago, another HEI was still
using a textbook on international studies dated 1976. The world has changed since. 1976 was
one year after the Vietnam War, 13 years before the fall of the Berlin wall and 25 years before
September 11.
Another professor tells of a school that refuses to give faculty members money for photocopying
exam papers. They either have to pay for copying themselves or write everything out on a
blackboard.
The government of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III is not blind to the problem of low
standards in higher education. In fact, it has ambitious reform plans for the education sector.
They include adding extra years to primary and secondary schooling.
There is indeed room for improvement, as CHED Chairperson Licuanan says: “The Aquino
administration inherited a chaotic higher education system.” In her view it is marked by too
many higher-education institutions and programmes, a job-skills mismatch, oversubscribed and
undersubscribed programmes, deteriorating quality and limited access to quality higher
education.
For these reasons, the CHED is pursuing a Higher Education Reform Agenda. Among other
things, it aims to improve standards and expand access.
At the same time, the commission’s political clout is being tested at the ground level. For some
time, it has been trying to close down a Manila school called the International Academy of
Management and Economics. This school uses the acronym IAME, which sounds a bit like the
vastly more prestigious Asian Institute of Management (AIM). The CHED accuses the IAME of
“gross and serious violations, continued defiance and failure to comply with existing laws, rules
and regulations”. Nonetheless, IAME is still in business. It claims to have close ties to President
Aquino himself.
Shady schools, however, are not the only challenge. Because secondary education tends to be
poor in the Philippines, HEIs take off from a rather low level. The writer and scholar Isagani
Cruz, who is a visiting fellow at Oxford University and has taught at various top-tier HEIs in the
Philippines, asserts that first year college in the Philippines is really only equivalent to high
school in other countries in academic terms.
All these issues prevent education from effectively contributing to economic growth and national
development. The issue is well understood. Bill Luz of the National Competitiveness Council
states: “Many in the business community have complained about our state of education. Indeed
in global competitive indices, we have been rated poorly in terms of quality of basic education,
quality of science and math education.” He points out that cooperation between industry and
academia must improve.
Indeed, many graduates lack the kind of skills and knowledge that employers expect of
professionals. “A large number of college graduates are taking low productivity jobs,” was the
assessment of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a country study of the Philippines in 2007.
In the same document, the ADB bemoaned a “scarcity of skilled workers in industries such as
information technology and business process outsourcing”.
Earlier this year, the World Bank made basically the same point about the Philippines in a
report on higher education in Asia. It argued that there was a disconnect between the education
system, government programmes and private sector needs. Unsurprisingly, the report
recommended improving the quality of higher education in order to boost the professional
competence of graduates.
Reference:
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/expensive-not-always-worth-much-higher-education-
philippines
It is uncommon to hear college teachers decry the quality of students that come to them. They
lament the students’ inability to construct a correct sentence, much less a paragraph. Private
schools have been assailed as profit-making institutions turning out half-baked graduates who
later become part of the nation’s educated unemployed. All these are indications of the poor
quality of education.
There are multiple factors which have led to low educational standards. Studies and fact-finding
commissions have shown that the deteriorating quality of education is due to the low
government budget for education; poor quality of teachers; poor management of schools; poor
school facilities such as laboratory and library facilities; poor learning environment; the content
of the curriculum; inadequate books and science equipment; the poor method of instruction;
shortages of classrooms; and others.
Reference:
https://www.imbalife.com/7-key-issues-and-problems-of-philippine-education
Tertiary education challenges
By: Ching Jorge - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 10:51 PM September 02, 2011
Tertiary education responds to three distinct national goals. First, it aims to educate the youth to
become active and productive members of society. Second, it seeks to meet and match industry
demand with a competent and globally competitive workforce. Finally, through a continuing
effort to reach global education standards, our universities aim to increase the quality of human
capital and productivity vis-à-vis national and economic progress.
Naturally, many issues continue to plague our tertiary education system. Substandard
institutions habitually fail to produce graduates with industry-standard competencies. Lately,
we have seen the emergence of institutions that take advantage of industry trends by offering
courses that aim solely to generate more revenue for the institution rather than deliver quality
education to its enrollees. We have also seen the proliferation of so-called state and community
colleges that create poor options for students by providing substandard education. Given these
circumstances, the following tertiary education components now deserve tighter scrutiny.
1. Teacher quality. Do college instructors consistently meet the minimum qualifications as
faculty? Do they have the skills and experience to guide the students in their chosen
programs, and do they exhibit the professionalism and dedication needed to inculcate
the discipline of scholarly inquiry?
2. Quality of programs and course offerings. Are the course offerings designed to provide
students with the needed skills and knowledge to become competitive individuals,
achievers in the workplace, or have they just been re-programmed to meet market
demand and generate more revenue for the school at the expense of quality?
3. Governance. How are these schools managed? Are they run by education professionals?
Are the schools affected by politics or are they used for political motivations and gain?
Do the school administrators have the professionalism and expertise to run the schools?
The Commission on Higher Education has announced that it will step up efforts monitor
substandard colleges and universities. The CHEd is fully aware that it needs to actively regulate
all programs—including Nursing—that produce unemployable graduates or exhibit low or even
zero passing rates in board exams. It faces the challenge of making sure that all non-performing
schools are closed and minimum qualifications for faculty are monitored. It must also exhibit
strong governance over state colleges and universities as well as colleges developed by local
governments to ensure compliance with quality education standards.
Public and private higher education should not compete but complement each other, with the
primary objective of meeting national development goals. Educational institutions must develop
programs to reflect the needs of education and the youth.
Reference:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/11189/tertiary-education-challenges
MISMATCH (TRAINING AND JOB)
ARTICLES RELATED TO THE PROBLEM:
The major problem of the tertiary level is the large proportion of the so called “mismatch”
between training and actual jobs, as well as the existence of a large group of educated
unemployed or underemployed. The literature points out that this could be the result of a
rational response to a dual labor market where one sector is import-substituting and highly-
protected with low wages. Graduates may choose to “wait it out” until a job opportunity in the
high paying sector comes.
To address this problem, it is suggested that leaders in business and industry should be actively
involved in higher education. Furthermore, a selective admission policy should be carried out;
that is, mechanisms should be installed to reduce enrolment in oversubscribed programs and
promote enrolment in undersubscribed ones.
Reference:
https://www.imbalife.com/7-key-issues-and-problems-of-philippine-education
THE estimated 1.2 million students who will graduate from college and finish vocation courses
this month will find it difficult to land jobs because of a growing mismatch between their
training and the skills required by most employers, according to the Associated Labor Unions—
Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP).
Aside from job-skill mismatch, new graduates are also faced with low wages, short-term
contractualized work and unsafe workplaces.
“We don’t want to give these young workforce any false hope. We don’t want to discourage them
either but these are the issues that confront our new graduates who will become the new breed
of the millenial workforce,” Alan Tanjusay, ALU spokesman, said on Monday.
He pointed out that job mismatch is the prime driver of underemployment.
A Labor Force Survey in October 2016 showed close to eight million workers needed another job
to augment their daily income.
Tanjusay said the job-skills mismatch continues to grow, resulting in stiffer competition.
Graduates, he said, are also confronted with low wages. The purchasing value of the P491 daily
wage for workers in the National Capital Region area has eroded to P363 a day.
Millenial workers also face prevalent job contractualization arrangement. Otherwise known as
“555” (five months contract) and “Endo” (End of contract), contractualization is a work
arrangement where workers are terminated after five months and then re-hired for another five
months.
“Seven out of ten of the current 41 million work force are contractuals. Workers who were
contractuals more than five years ago remain contractuals until today, getting the same entry-
level pay without security of tenure and the benefits that they supposed to enjoy. That’s how bad
and massive contractualization is,” Tanjusay said.
The Department of Labor and Employment’s Labor Market Information report for 2013 to 2020
identified key 275 occupations as in-demand and 102 occupations as hard-to-fill from among
key and emerging industries.
In-demand occupations refer to active occupations/job vacancies posted or advertised
recurrently. These occupations have high turnover/replacement rate and are essential in the
operations of a company.
These include abaca pulp processor, admino programmer, banana growing worker, bangus
diver, banquet supervisor, bamboo materials craftsman, fish cage caretaker, groundskeeper,
multi-lingual service crew, mussel grower, pointman, reefman, and whale shark interaction
officer.
Hard-to-fill occupations include 2-D digital animator, agricultural designer, bioinformatics
analyst, clean-up artist, cosmetic dentist, cosmetic surgeon, cuisine chef, ethanol machine
processing operator, multi-lingual tour guide, in-between artist (animation), in-between checker
(animation), and mechatronics engineer.
Reference:
http://www.manilatimes.net/1-million-graduates-face-job-skill-mismatch/317111/
Addressing the jobs mismatch
By: Cielito F. Habito- @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 09:40 PM August 05, 2013
In his State of the Nation Address two years ago, President Aquino noted 50,000 jobs in the
Phil-JobNet website that the knowledge and skills of job seekers did not match the needs of the
companies. As of last May 29, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz reported 130,290 vacancies in
that website, the government’s official jobs portal that consolidates vacancy postings from
various sources. Last January, a record high of 268,278 job vacancies was posted, while the
number of registered worker-applicants was only less than half (116,795).
Last Labor Day, the Department of Labor and Employment attracted a total of 36,765 job
applicants in job fairs held in various parts of the country. Only 1,274 found immediate
placement, with another 3,340 applicants told to undergo further interviews with employers.
This suggests that less than one out of 10 applicants manages to find a job in DOLE’s job fairs.
And yet Secretary Baldoz observes that just like in the website, the number of jobs offered
during job fairs normally exceeds the number of applicants.
One wonders why we have a persistent problem with high unemployment and
underemployment, and yet have so many jobs persistently waiting to be filled. The usual answer
is that we face a jobs-skills mismatch wherein the training of our jobseekers simply does not
match the requirements of the companies looking for people to fill their vacancies.
In many cases, the skills mismatch is very real. Philippine Business for Education (PBEd),
through its research partner Brain Trust Inc. (BTI), interviewed various companies’ human
resource officers as part of its USAID-funded Higher Education for Productivity Project (HEPP).
A large industrial firm in Batangas needs dozens of engineers for its projected expansion, but
can’t find suitable recruits.
But the perceived technical skills mismatch appears illusory in other contexts. I’ve heard a
number of human resource officers say that what they are looking for, but have difficulty finding
in their applicants, are not so much technical skills (such as those obtained in science,
engineering and technology courses) but more of “soft” ones: communication and presentation
skills, analytical ability, resourcefulness, creativity, motivation, ability to work in a team,
honesty and the like.
These are all too often neglected in the schools where the workers are trained. One might well
argue that some of these “soft” skills cannot be taught in school. On the other hand, the
technical skills demanded by the job can often be readily imparted through in-company training,
making the specific technical training of the applicant less critical. Many employers only look for
any college degree, and for as long as applicants possess the desired “soft” skills, they will take
care of the rest. Here, the mismatch is not in technical training, but in something more
fundamental.
In a survey run by BTI, students were asked who chose the course they were enrolled in. Most
said that they made the choice themselves (rather than, say, their parents). Asked further what
influenced their choice, the overwhelming reply was that the course was “in demand.”
The problem is that what seems to be in demand now may no longer be so four to five years later
when they graduate and look for jobs. Furthermore, perceptions on what is “in demand” could
be misplaced and prone to “herd mentality” and fickle swings in the market. Meanwhile, most
schools also tend to base their choice of course offerings on what they see students and parents
want, thereby reinforcing the possible error in perception of job market demands.
In the ideal world, schools—be they universities, colleges or technical/vocational training
institutions—would be in regular contact and close coordination with the potential employers of
their graduates, well-guided on the nature and content of their course offerings in order to be
most responsive to the needs of the firms.
The most common way this contact currently happens is through on-the-job training (OJT)
programs that college seniors must go through. But we’ve encountered firms that don’t take
OJTs seriously, even seeing them as a burden, supervision costs and all. There is great scope for
strengthening linkages between industry and academe to foster more relevant course and
curriculum design, university-based research agenda, faculty enrichment through industrial
immersion, scholarship programs, and other modes for helping the schools address the
persistent job-skills mismatch.
Reference:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/58177/addressing-the-jobs-mismatch