UP EDUCATION---From the People, To the People

 

For more than a century, the University of the Philippines boasted of its unrivaled dedication to providing its constituents quality education through instilling academic freedom, critical thinking and accessible education. Hence, nothing compares to the very rewarding feeling one gets after passing the UPCAT and besting thousand others who likewise dreamed of a UP Education.

 

Being a state university, the University of the Philippines is subsidized by the state, supposedly to cater to competent youths who could not suffice a university education because of financial incapacities. This being so, a UP student is thus called “Scholar of the People”. They are students who are subsidized by the taxes the state receives from its laborers, government workers, and businessmen who, despite more pressing needs amidst continuing increases in oil and commodity, give a chunk of their revenues for educating Filipino youths.

 

Oblation, which is a prominent figure in UP, best embodies how a student should view a UP Education. Oblation, which means “self-sacrifice”, truly reminds students that education is not merely for one’s selfish needs and aspirations. Instead, it entails sacrificing our individual preferences for a greater cause, that is, being of service to the “people” who once sacrificed their personal comforts just so we be provided of a much-coveted UP education. A UP student is set apart from other students such that it sees itself never separate from the masses, never contented with the proud notion of "ISKOLAR PARA SA BAYAN". They remain firm that the real score of service is being one with the masses, experiencing their miseries first-hand, and not being atop ivory towers regarding oneself "separate" from the people. Being an "ISKOLAR NG BAYAN" both acknowledges the fact that our education is FROM and FOR the masses.  

 

While our much coveted education is supposedly accessible, if not free, being among the people’s constitutionally guaranteed rights to a healthy and fulfilled form of life, the current administration continues to play deaf on the needs of the education sector. For this fiscal year, the Aquino administration slashed the budget of State Universities and Colleges (SUC’s) by 1.7%, from P.23.8 billion in 2010 to 23.4 billion, citing that SUC’s could raise their own funds through private partnerships, thus directly manifesting state-abandonment of education. UP alone faces P.1.39 billion budget cut, resulting to even more commercialization schemes as the newly-approved Dorm Fee Increase, among already existing University Policies as Large Lecture Class Policy (LLCP) and Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP).

 

In response to the Aquino administration’s move on making students bear the brunt of poor government subsidy, students from all over the country marched the streets in protest of the biggest budget cut in the history of education. While such marks the even more appalling state of education in the country, and more particularly, how a UP Education proves to be all the more necessary, it also tells of victory. Students who have chosen the streets to register their right to education found themselves victorious after the senate approved an increment to the then deducted education budget.

 

Indeed, freshmen students ought to take pride in being chosen as the next Scholars of the People.They are chosen to bear the torch of a united and continuing struggle against commercialized education. Truly, there is no other way but assert for what is rightfully ours.

 

SCHOLARS OF THE PEOPLE, UNITE!

ASSERT FOR GREATER STATE SUBSIDY!

SCRAP LLCP!

NO TO DORM FEE INCREASE!