RE: STFAP Review & Revision

Last semester, the University Student Council arrived at a consensus to push for the review and revision of the Socialized Tuition and Finacial Assistance Program (STFAP) while maintaining its strong stand against the undemocratic process by which tuition increase was implemented in 2006.

Since that year, there has been various campaigns to revisit and improve the STFAP, recognizing that the same policy has solid social justice underpinnings.

An STFAP revision is necessary only if the UP Administration will be consistent with the lofty ideals of socialized tertiary education. As UP’s Centennial draws to a close, what more fitting tribute can UP implement (as an institution of accessible higher learning) than to fast track the long-overdue revision of the STFAP.

The time to change STFAP is now. Any further delay, even for a day, means stripping off the worthy youth of their chance at quality UP education, merely because of financial restrictions.

4 November 2008
Dr. Emerlinda R. Roman
President
University of the Philippines System

RE: Urgent Review and Revision of the Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP)

Dear President Roman:

Warm greetings from Vinzons Hall!

I am writing this letter to formalize the recommendations that I proposed in the University Committee on Scholarships and Financial Assistance (UCSFA ) last week, 28 October 2008 at the Board of Regents Room, Quezon Hall, as well as for your swift, appropriate action.

Whatever debate there may be as to the soundness of the STFAP as a university policy, it is beyond cavil that the same is an affirmative measure towards social justice. The STFAP also is a conceptual recognition of the constitutional and internationally-recognized right of the youth to accessible and quality tertiary education.

However, since its establishment in 1989, and even after it has been revised in 2006, the STFAP still suffers from infirmities that in effect make the whole policy run counter to its noble objectives. Two major issues are briefly discussed here, to wit:

1. Patently erroneous income brackets (or B2 as we call it in the UCSFA). When tuition rates were adjusted in 2006, the primary reason given to justify it was inflation. Because of this, tuition and other fees were increased to catch up with real economic conditions. Then, the income range which enjoy full tuition subsidy is from zero to PhP130,000 (corresponding to numeric brackets 1 to 5).

   The adjustment of tuition rates also necessarily resulted to a revision of the old STFAP brackets to a new alphabetic 5-bracket scheme. However, as various student groups and some faculty strongly manifested to the Board of Regents (BOR) on the wake of the BOR meeting approving the said tuition increase and STFAP revision, the new bracketing system seem to deviate from the normal effects of inflation.

   Under the new STFAP brackets, the income range which enjoys full tuition subsidy is markedly compressed to only up to PhP80,000—a substantial reduction of nearly 40% of the original PhP130,000. This means that 40% of those who under the old STFAP system were not paying tuition would now be paying PhP300 per unit.

   This result is plainly unacceptable because the reason for adjusting tuition rates and the brackets is precisely, inflation. It is unthinkable that when it comes to adjusting tuition rates, a 300% increase was approved, but in the granting of full tuition privileges to financially-deserving students, a regressive 40% decrease was authorized, wittingly or unwittingly, by the UP administration.

2. Questionable predictive income brackets (or B3 as the UCSFA calls it). The UCSFA has been reminded by Prof. Edgardo Atanacio not to discount altogether B3 even when it is the only one which flags a student to a higher income bracket, as it “gives an idea on how the family performs in terms of income against the rest of the families in the Philippines” as regressed against the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and the Labor Force Survey (LFS) of the National Statistics Office (NSO).

   This caveat however would only hold true if instances where B3 is the only bracket assignment which differs from the rest are limited to exceptions. The reverse unfortunately is true. Based on our experience in the Diliman Committee on Scholarships and Financial Assistance (DCSFA) which was confirmed by parallel experiences in the different constituent UP units during UCSFA, roughly more than 90% of students who appealed their assignment have been so assigned solely because they have been flagged to a higher bracket by B3.

   Thus, there is sound reason to question the propensity of the predictive income bracket to adequately and accurately reflect the economic realities experienced by UP students. The net effect of B3 is to trump the already deflated family income assignment. Barring an appeal from the student, B3 would be automatically assigned as a students’ final bracket.

   While it may be argued that the appeals process is a good way of correcting mistakes in the system, whether on simple computations or otherwise, simply relying on it on a case-to-case basis is, at best, administratively unsound. In the first place, the goal of assigning brackets to students is to be able to come up with a more or less truthful reflection of the financial and spending capacity of their families, which in turn, allows UP to apportion subsidy on the basis of need.

   As a result, affording B3 a trumping effect gravely hampers an accurate conferment of privileges to those who are supposedly benefited by the STFAP.

On account of these concerns, I have forwarded these recommendations to the UCSFA:

1. Push for the correction of bracketing based on family income. Bracket E should be expanded, consistent with the same level of inflation used in adjusting tuition rates. Thus, Bracket E should extend at least to PhP130,000 annual family incomes.
   • The possibility of creating two subgroups within Bracket E may also be explored. For example, a two-core Bracket E may be composed of E1 (corresponding to income brackets from PhP80,000 to PhP150,000) and E2 (PhP0 to PhP80,000). While E1 would be entitled to free tuition only, E2 would additionally be given the PhP12,000 stipend.
2. Review the effectiveness of LFS and FIES in accurately measuring the real financial capability of students. As stated above, there is serious doubt as to the accuracy of the predictive income as a mirror of the actual economic profile of a student which comes as a hurdle to the appropriate apportionment of tuition subsidy and stipends.
   • On this note, it is also recommended that the policy of automatically assigning the highest bracket from among the four criteria be abandoned. B3 should not be mechanically decisive, but be given only persuasive weight in determining the final bracket assignment.
   • The DCSFA and the UCSFA should also be sufficiently educated as to the process of coming up with B3. The complexity of these processes should only be reason for developing a simplified manner of explaining to the members of the appeals bodies how B3 is computed and what specific factors are encoded.
3. Open up formal consultation avenues with the students with a view of improving the STFAP. Since the students are the ones directly affected by this policy, they have direct experience with the STFAP and its processes. The administration cannot afford not to actively seek assistance of students if it truly seeks to develop an agreeable system. This can be done through the following:
   • Having student representatives in the STFAP committees as well as in any review committee that may be formed; and
   • Gathering feedback and recommendations straight from students through unit-wide consultation sessions by the pertinent scholarship office (i.e. Office for Scholarships and Student Services) to be submitted to the DCSFA and ultimately to the UCSFA.

Another year of implementing the STFAP under the status quo, fully knowing the glaring conceptual and actual infirmities of the policy would only mean a tacit acceptance by this administration of the same injustices that specifically impelled UP in implementing its own system of socialized education almost 20 years ago.

We hope that through your resolve to improve the STFAP, these necessary policy revisions would find fruition in the soonest time possible. Thank you very much.

For the University,

Herminio C. Bagro III
Chairperson, UP Diliman Student Council
Member, UCSFA

USC Statement: The Iskolar ng Bayan in the Thick of Crises

Last June 20, 2008, the story of a freshman Chemistry major who dropped out on the third day of his classes found its way in the pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The Letter to the Editor was written by a professor in the UP Math Department who was dismayed to find out that his student dropped out because he was assigned to bracket C of the restructured Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP), which in consequence would require him to pay P600 per unit.

Sadly, our fellow Iskolar ng Bayan’s situation has become more common in UP since the Board of Regents approved the 300% tuition and other fee increases (TOFI) last 2006, despite the lack of comprehensive consultation from the students and the absence of the Student and Faculty Regents in the meeting.

More alarming, however, is how common our fellow Iskolar ng Bayan’s plight is in this country. According to the CHED, 11 million Filipinos aged 6-24 years old or just over one-third of those in that age bracket have stopped going to school. The Commission adds that for this school year alone, approximately a million school-going Filipinos have had to drop out.

Should we be surprised? After all, as the prices of basic goods like rice, bread, canned goods, vegetables, meat, fish, petroleum products, transportation, and electricity skyrocket to record-highs, the Filipino family’s budget for sustaining their children’s education has virtually disappeared.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), families in developing countries, such as the Philippines, spend 60% of their budget on food alone. Moreover, the IBON Foundation cites that the poorest 30% of the Philippine population spends even more than that. When the cost of staple foods rises, therefore, the poor are the first to suffer. So when both the cost of staple foods and education simultaneously increase, it is nothing but a recipe for disaster for the 65 million Filipinos living below the P112/day poverty line.

Dole-outs in the form of rice and other subsidies do nothing to address the real causes of spiraling poverty and diminishing access to education in the Philippines. Many groups have insisted that a P125 across-the-board wage hike and the scrapping of VAT are realistic measures the government can take to provide instant relief to those hardest hit by the prevailing economic crisis.

Last year, the government allotted a miserable 2.66% of the GNP for education – once again, nowhere near the minimum of six percent set by UNESCO Delors Commission for developing countries. Since 1998, when the education budget peaked at 3.8%, the government has continuously and deliberately decreased public spending on education in line with its commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The IMF’s SAP encourages governments with massive foreign debt to reduce spending on social services so as to increase allocation for debt servicing. Certainly, a look at the Philippine budget in the last eight years clearly illustrates how compliant the government has been to the SAP: giving more than half of the pie to pay off debts and leaving so little to care for the physical and mental well-being of the Filipino people.

Since 2001, President Arroyo with her administration has done nothing substantial to re-appropriate government spending and genuinely prioritize education. On the contrary, she has aggressively pushed for the full realization of the SAP through the Long Term Higher Education Development Plan (LTHEDP), which aims to make 70% of all State Universities fiscally autonomous by raising their tuition fees to private-school-level by 2010. She has also refused to do anything to alleviate the impact of oil price hikes and instead continues to implement E-VAT to the further detriment of Filipinos.

In light of all these, we demand for: the immediate rollback of the tuition increase amidst a worsening economic crisis; the junking of the UP’s most recent tuition policy (automatic tuition increase based on inflation, tuition increase to augment government subsidy, restructured STFAP), without prejudice to further investigation of the STFAP; and the increase of state subsidy for education. These are but some of the many genuine steps towards providing economic relief to all iskolars ng bayan. These are crucial steps so that families today and in the future no longer have to choose between spending for food or spending for education.

As Iskolars ng Bayan, we must analyze these social and economic issues besieging our country beyond the comfortable confines of the academe. We cannot afford to ignore the widespread hardship, which the majority of the Filipino people are barely enduring, because sooner rather than later it will affect us all – and the UP Chemistry freshman’s story will be too commonplace to be on the news.

Roll back 300% tuition increase!
Junk UP’s newest tuition policy!
Push for a comprehensive review of the STFAP!
Increase government spending on education!
Reform the Philippine educational system!