Corruption in Education: causes and consequences

The case of the Philippines

Introduction

Education ideally transmits values such as integrity, equality and social justice, and the
sense of shared responsibility that is key to social cohesion and good governance. But, it is regrettable
that education system has deteriorated to the extent that instead of being an agent of transformation,
empowerment and an instrument of purifying the minds of the young ones to become useful members
of the society, has today become an agent of imparting corruption in the minds of the youth. If learners
come to believe that school or university admission and marks can be purchased, a country’s economic
and political future is in jeopardy. Corrupt practices at schools and universities directly contradict the
concept of human rights, solidarity and the public good; destroying the trust necessary to the
development of countries. This aberration in the goal and aim of education is caused by endemic and
legendary corruption in education in the Philippines. Corruption in Philippines education system
manifests itself in all levels of education (primary, secondary and tertiary institutions). There exist
different forms of corruption existing in our institution for example, bribes paid by parents to teachers
and public officials to get good grades and pass exams; bribes paid by teachers to public officials to get
preferred posting and promotion; embezzlement of funds allocated to purchase of teaching materials or
school building; fraud in public tendering; absenteeism of teachers; nepotism and favouritism;
examination malpractice; etc. The existence of different forms of corruption in our institution has led to
dearth of infrastructure in the schools and the decay of the quality of education.

National education systems across the developing world are particularly vulnerable to
pervasive corruption, largely for three reasons. (1) As one of the few governmental agencies with high
visibility representation all the way down to the community level, education is an attractive structure for
patronage and manipulation of local sentiment. (2) Decisions perceived to have significant
consequences for people’s lives are made by “gatekeepers” who control decisions at each of those
levels (e.g., district education officers, headmasters, teachers). (3) A considerable amount of education
funds are spent in small amounts, across many scattered sites, most of which have weak accounting and
monitoring systems. While there are ample examples of large-scale corruption within central education
ministries, this paper argues that the most serious consequences arise from the pervasive, petty
corruption that permeates the day-to-day transactions at the classroom, school, and district levels. The
real damage to a society occurs when entire generations of youth are mis-educated – by example -- to
believe that personal success comes not through merit and hard work, but through favoritism, bribery,
and fraud. Widespread petty corruption breaks the link between personal effort and anticipation of
reward. This, in turn, limits the economic and social development well beyond the immediate
corruption. Such lessons have the potential to undermine civil society well into the future.

In the case of the Philippines, The 1987 Constitution mandates that education must be
appropriated with the biggest portion of wealth of the country. The Department of Budget and
Management has allocated five hundred ninety-five billion pesos to fund the education sector in the
Philippines for year 2021. Provisions in the law are set to appropriate this amount to better deliver
quality education to the Filipino people especially during this pandemic. Unfortunately, corruption is
deeply rooted on the education sector of the country. The funds in education sector is undeniably one of
the most vulnerable sources of corruption in the country. It is a common view that corruption is one of
the major challenges in the Philippines and as mentioned above, the education sector is not an
exception to it (Durban and Catalan, 2012; Seth Jones, 2013). Corruption exist in various levels including
the Department of Education [DepEd] (Reyes, 2010). While DepEd is the biggest bureaucracy in the
Philippines with over half a million people employed (Reyes, 2010), it is considered to be one of the
most corrupt national agencies of the country (Carino, Iglesias, & Mendoza, 1998). The biggest
corruption case in Philippine education is the Philippines' Textbook Shortage in 1990s. The supply of
public school textbooks was decentralized in the 1990s and textbook purchases were directly negotiated
with suppliers at the regional level. Corruption became rampant: bribes to regional education offices
represented as much as 20 percent of the cost of a contract. Overall, it was estimated that 20 to 65
percent of textbook funds were eaten up by pay-offs to corrupt officials. The result was a critical
shortage of textbooks in the country’s 40,000 public schools, despite high levels of spending. In some
cases, one textbook had to be shared by six pupils in elementary schools and by eight students in
secondary schools (Chua, 1999).

What corruption also impairs—irrespective of its manifest form—is the operating

principle of fairness that the public expects to undergird the educational apparatus where leaders can
be chosen on the basis of skills and performance rather than the ascribed traits with which one is born
(Heyneman, 2020). This belief, since the time of Plato’s republic, is a shared value. On the other hand,
when that principle is broken, teachers, administrators, and students no longer model the societies one
hopes to live in. When that happens, finding positions with access to bribes and rent-seeking presents
the only obvious path to economic security (Murphy, Shleifer, & Vishny, 1991). The fact that corruption
in education is often corruption of minor children and young adults infers that it can be more damaging
than corruption in other sectors. Research suggests that witnessing corruption in education affects
students’ propensity to allow bribery later in life (Liu & Peng, 2015). Using machine learning, an analysis
of data from 132 countries with 117 variables demonstrates that having more education was positively
associated with lesser corruption (Lima & Delen, 2020). Education can therefore be crucial in helping
citizens self-regulate and moralize their behaviors, but education cannot fulfill that role when education
itself is corrupt. This article discusses the definition, causes, forms, and harms of corruption in
education, and offers some countermeasures.

Statement of Purpose
The main purpose of this study is to raise awareness and provide useful information about the
characteristics of corruption and to determine the causes and costs of corruption on education in the
Philippines.

Other specific purposes of this study are:

i. To ascertain the causes of corruption in Philippine Education.

ii. To bring to bare the elements of corruption in education.

iii. To examine the implication of corruption on educational system of our society today.

iv. To find out the different forms in which corruption has taken shape in education.

v. To proffer possible solutions to the effects of corruption.

Research Questions:

For the researcher to have a sense of guidance, the following research questions have been formulated:

a. What are the causes of corruption in Philippine education?

b. What are the implications of corruption on educational system of our society today?

c. What are the different forms in which corruption has taken shape in education?

d. What are the possible solutions to the effects of corruption?

Significance of the Study

This research is significance since corruption in education most affects the poor and disadvantaged,
particularly the vulnerable members of the society. The significant negative correlation between school
corruption and educational outcomes found in this study implies the importance that further action be
taken to eliminate corruption in school. This study will therefore, be beneficial to the government,
school administrators, teachers, parents and most especially the students or the future generation.

The government will get to know how the academic corruption has eating deep into the nation’s
economy and deteriorating the quality of education. Therefore, drastic measures and efforts will be
taken in order to mitigate these effects like supressing more laws to change the incentive systems that
fuel corruption.

The School Admimistrators, they should be the first to pursue corruption as an obstacle to high-quality
education and to national development, starting with a declaration of a zero-tolerance approach to
corruption as an essential element in strengthening access to and the quality of education. This study
suggests countermeasures for them to reform their previous practices in reducing corruption.
Teachers , who are charged with the duty of inculcating values and teaching the children their civic
rights and responsibilities as citizens, will reflect on their duty as teachers for them to set a good
example to their students. They will not rest until they teach these leaders of tomorrow, the dangers of
and consequences of corruption – underdevelopment, so that when they become leaders tomorrow,
they will avoid it.

To the parents, they say charity begins at home. The morals inculcated by parents in children at a tender
age, is hard to be forgotten. Therefore, parents will tell didactic stories to their children which will serve
as deterrent to them when they find themselves in positions.

Coming to the students, they will come to terms with the fact that corruption destroys an individual and
the economy’s development as well. To this end, they learn to be honest and grow up to be better
citizens and successful individuals with morals and integrity.

The future generations. The children are the first victims of corruption in education, and the costs of
corruption affect the integrity and dignity of the person for life, as well as society at large. The social
investment in future citizens fails when individuals can succeed dishonestly and without merit, swelling
the ranks of incompetent future leaders and professionals. Not only society but even human life can be
endangered by fake or untrained doctors, judges or engineers, or by bogus scientific research carried
out by corrupt academics. Through this research, they will come to realise that the hope of this nation
lies in them.

Conceptual and Theoretical Perspectives

Most publications on corruption in general (and academic corruption, in particular) have

adopted either the World Bank’s or Transparency International’s definition of corruption. The World
Bank defined corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain” (as cited in Wei, 1999, p. 2),
whereas Transparency International (2018) regarded it as “the abuse of entrusted power for private
gain” (para. 1). Whether, beyond the semantics, the two definitions are fundamentally different or are
different sides of the same coin is debatable. The recurrent question in the discourse relates to whether
the World Bank’s definition, owing to the use of the words public office, is applicable to both the public
and private spheres in general and public and private higher education in particular. To Denisova-
Schmidt (2018), if education is understood to be a public good, then the World Bank’s conceptualization
of corruption is applicable to both public and private higher education. However, there is no consensus
on whether education (specifically, higher education) is a public or private good. Beyond this treatise,
Hallak and Poisson (2002) defined corruption in education as “the systematic use of public office for
private benefit, whose impact is significant on the availability and quality of educational goods and
services, and, as a consequence on access, quality or equity in education” (p. 29). The definition
incorporates those of the World Bank and Transparency International and also highlights the
ramifications of corruption regarding access, equity, and quality.

Conceptual Map in Analysing Corruption and Implementation

Determinants and obstacles to Causes of corruption

implementation

Policy Implementation outputs Operational demands Monopoly opportunities

Nature and availability of Discretion compliance

resources
Accountability incentives
Power and shared authority

This study recognizes that corruption increases with the sinister combination of (i) amplified monopoly
opportunities highlighted by ineffectual controls on sanction; increased discretionary authority and
concomitant decrease in compliance manifested by the vulnerability of resources and incapacity of
implementers; and non-existent accountability systems complicated by distorted incentives and
disincentives schemes typified by incongruent practices and discordant power relations in
implementation setting.

Literature Review

The reviewed literature in this paper was obtained from three different sources: a) from electronic
databases, including: Academic Search Premier/EBSCO, ERIC/EBSCO, Education Abstracts/EBSCO,
Google Scholar, Citation Indices/ISI Web of Science, Proquest Dissertations & Theses, JSTOR, and Lexis-
Nexis Academic; b) from databases created by international organizations like Transparency
International, ETICO (UNESCO), CLAD, and the U4 Anti-corruption Resource Centre; and c), books and
available documents found through the Harvard University Hollis database. Authors support the
argument that corruption has a differentiated effect across social groups with different socioeconomic
conditions as corruption is a chronic disadvantage for the poorest population. For instance, Azfar and
Gurgur (2001) report that in rural municipalities in The Philippines, corruption “significantly reduces the
success rate of students, unlike in the case of similar urban communities. Chua (1999) described a case
in The Philippines, where under-delivery of goods represented up to 60% of the total value of public
acquisition contracts. In just one contract reviewed, this author found that a provider delivered 111,000
fewer armchairs than promised. In the Philippines, one in every five students does not have a chair. In a
similar case, up to 65% of the resources allocated for a textbook program were lost by corruption. The
amount lost by the government solely in this transaction represents the cost of almost one million
additional books considering that in the basic level education schools, one textbook is shared by every
six pupils. Hallak and Poisson (2002) report "surveys suggest that leakage of funds from Ministries of
Education to schools represent more than 80% of the total sums allocated (non salary expenditures) in
some countries". Anderson, Kaufmann and Recanatini (2003, in Rose-Ackerman 2004) confirm that
while the rich bribe for speeding services, the poor bribe for getting access to services (among poor
population, 39% of them declares that they have paid a bribe “to avoid problems”. Only 17% among the
rich population declares the same). Therefore, a lack of agency, voice, and the prevalence of impunity
will create conditions where access to education for the poorest population will be contingent on their
economic capacity to pay bribes.

Tanaka (2001) provides a model to anticipate corruption in education. His anticipatory model describes
some of the possible areas in education systems exposed to corruption, including a definition of the
actors, possible types of corruption, vulnerable areas, and measures to be implemented in order to
reduce exposed spaces to corruption in education. This work is one of the few references found in the
study of corruption from an educational research perspective.

The literature reviewed includes empirical studies that attempt to demonstrate effects of corruption on
educational outcomes using quantitative methods. In this case, the main goal is to find reports on
estimated effects of corruption on educational outcomes, mainly through the use of quasi-experimental
designs (like in the case of Mauro (1998), Gupta, Davoodi, and Tiongson (2001)) or experimental designs
(like those reported by Banerjee and Duflo (2005)). Mauro (1998) studied the effect of corruption in the
composition of public expenditure, concluding that expenditure in public education will be reduced by
decisions of public officials who will decide to invest in areas with higher illegal profits. In other words,
from the point of view of corrupt officials, it is easier to get benefits from the acquisition of goods in
other areas than education; consequently, they decide to “invest” more according to their interests of
obtaining economic benefits. Mauro (1997) looked at corruption and its effect on the composition of
government expenditures and found that government expenditure on education was negatively and
significantly associated with corruption, after controlling for gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
Corrupt countries were found to spend less on education as a percentage of their GDP; Mauro (1998)
indicated that if a country improves its corruption index by one standard deviation, government
spending on education can increase by around a half percent of GDP. The harm of the lack of investment
in education by more corrupt countries is a serious problem (Kauffman, 1997). In an empirical study of
corruption in one developing country, Azfar and Gurgur (2001) found that a disproportionate burden of
corruption was placed on the poor and indicated that corruption reduced test scores, lowered national
ranking of schools, and raised variation of test results across schools. Gupta, Davoodi, and Tiongson
(2000) suggested that corruption increases the cost and lowers the quality of education services. It is not
a surprise that the education sector is a target for corrupt officials, because education is the largest or
second-largest budget item in most countries and opportunities for corrupt practices are numerous (U4
Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, 2006). In some countries, education consumes an estimated 30
percent of the national budget, creating a potential wide avenue for corruption (Transparency
International, 2006).

Definition of Terms

For clear understanding of the research, the terms which will be used in the course of the research and
are related to the topic will be defined as follows:

Corruption: an arrangement of demand and supply that has an immediate or long term impact on
today’s resources or an arrangement that abuses public resources for personal gains. (Macrae, 1982)

Consequences: a change which is a result or effect of an action or other cause. It could also be likened to
aftermaths of a phenomenon.

Education: Education is a systematic process through which a child or an adult acquires knowledge,
experience and relevant skills from one generation to another.

Development: “A multidimensional undertaking” to improve the overall quality of life(Kurtas, 2018)

economically, politically and socially for sustainable development; where people have a larger range of
choices to lead healthy lives (UNDP, 1990)
Bribery: the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an
official, or other person, in charge of a public or legal duty.

Nepotism: the unfair use of power in order to get jobs or other benefits for your family or friendsm

Jeopardy: a danger of harm; the risk of loss.

Transparency: honesty and openness. It promotes accountability and provides information for citizens
about what their officials is doing.