Last 2006, the the only hope of the poor but intelligent Filipino students, like us have declared its tuition fee increase and mind you my fellow iskolars, the increase is as much as 300 percent. Our institution and it’s administrators have been claiming that quality education must come with a cost, a very ridiculous idea! Let me remind everyone that our school is a state university, and by this tuition fee increase the idea of a state university is being demolished. And next school year, instead of welcoming more and more deserving students we will be seeing more students who come from well-off families.Where is equity in there, where will the lower class students study now? We can see that this proposed tuition fee increase is a strategy of exclusion and is a burden to all students. I call it a strategy of exclusion since many of the supposed future students who come from a poor family will be deprived to a better access of quality education.Our school must have realized even before that there are many people who want to study yet they cannot because of the high price of college education and our school has served as their only hope to a quality education but at a very accessible price. But now all the dreams and hopes of these people are all gone, just because of this proposed tuition fee increase. I once heard my mother asked me if why I am reacting much to this issue. Simply because we are taught on how to become concern citizens of this country, simply because our institution have taught us to exercise our freedom of thoughts and simply because and most of all I am also affected in this increase. Next year I , you and everyone of us from this school does not anymore deserve the title of "Iskolars ng Bayan", next year our school will soon be competing with Sacred Heart and San Carlos in attracting and educating the children of the rich. It hurts to know that the hope of many poor students is now also finding its way away from us.
I am definitely an anti-TOFI. Not because I am one of the products of the persuasion but its because I am a deserving U.P. student. I just could not understand why our school is having this increase in tuition fee when in the very first place, i is the government that has been supporting us. They say that because they want to improve our school, but why such big increase?now I think they must know that even the annual tuition and other fee increase in private schools is a problem to students and parents, especially with the current economic and political crisis. Note, that they are the students from private schools, most students in there come from a well-off family,yet they still find the increase a burden to them. How much more to the families who are only earning enough to support their basic needs. Many of today’s youth are compelled to drop out of school because of the inability of their parents to support them in their studies and with this tuition and other fees increase , are they expecting to educate more students or are they prepared to face the consequence of their decision, that there will be more Filipino youth who will not be educated.
I am only a voice but I am just one of them,there are still a lot of us.
