The Kabataan Party and the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) today expressed concern over the appointment of Romulo Neri to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), saying his selection fits perfectly well to government plan to institute corporate control of tertiary education.
“Neri’s appointment to CHED is consistent with the Arroyo administration’s long term plan to reduce government sponsorship and financing of state schools and eventually hand over full control and supervision of tertiary education to the private sector,” Kabataan Party President Raymond Palatino said.
Palatino added that the appointment of the government’s chief economist as higher education czar could mean institutionalization of pure market mechanisms in regulating educational exchanges in public education.
“We fear that his appointment could lead to the imposition of management and efficiency models borrowed from the business sector as a framework for educational decision-making. This would only reinforce government thrust to commodify education and treat state schools not as national agencies performing socially oriented activities and hence entitled to government subsidy but as income-earning entities,” he pointed out.
“Such a shift in decision-making framework could translate to the idea of state schools operating like semi-corporations and continued deregulation of tertiary education, leaving millions of college students and hopefuls at the mercy of school owners and businesses.”
For his part, NUSP Secretary General Alvin Peters criticized the priorities of the new CHED leadership to reassess the relevance of tertiary education with regard to business interests and bank on vocational-technical education.
Peters said there are far more important and basic issues that warrant CHED’s immediate and decisive action which can’t be resolved by existing knee-jerk programs on education.
He particularly emphasized the urgent need to put an end to unabated tuition hikes and imposition of exorbitant fees in schools and resolve the controversy created by CHED’s hasty lifting of the tuition cap in the middle of school consultations last February.
“The first thing that CHED must do is to live up to its own mandate of ensuring that the youth have access to quality education and curb the increasing number of college dropouts and out-of-school youth.”
“We’ve had enough of education officials who compromise education for business interests or even conspire and act as willing accomplices of school owners. What higher education needs is a CHED chairman who has political will and independence to stand up to private school owners and even Malacañang.”
buhayin na natin ulit ito dahil tayong KABATAAN ay nasa kongreso na!
isang pagpupugay sa lahat ng KABATAAN!