Youth groups slam move to increase school fees

Student youth groups in Cebu criticize the move of some private colleges and universities to increase tuition and other school fees.

These student leaders said the intention to raise the fees only “commercializes” education.

Joisa Cesista, chairperson of AnakbayanCebu, said the group remains firm on its stand opposing any plan of increasing tuition or other fees in schools.

“Students and parents are treated as milking cows of school administrations and the government itself… the intensified commercialization of education is literally killing students like Rodolfo Urmanita of Cagayan State University,” she conveyed to The FREEMAN in a text message.

Urmanita, 19, committed suicide reportedly due to depression. People close to him believed that he ended his life reportedly because of his unpaid school dues - to which the school administration denied.

Cesista underscored that under the existing Constitution, “education is a right and the state must do all means to make it accessible and free to all Filipino citizens.”

She, however, said the free tuition policy recently approved is a “bogus” and is not making education free at all, since some local universities and colleges and other private schools still collect tuition and other school fees.

Romae Chanice Marquez, convener of Youth Act Now Against Tyranny, said the proposal of some private institutions to increase tuition and other school fees is a great manifestation of a “commercialized, colonized and fascist education.”

“We believe and we are still fighting for a genuine free, quality education with a nationalist, scientific and mass oriented foundation. These institutions need to embody that education will never be for sale and not only for the privileged. This is a right and will always be fought for,” she told The FREEMAN in a separate message.

She said these tuition fee increases needs to be justified.

“We know that the problems inside the institution are only the microcosm of the bigger problems of the society,” she said.

She feared that as an implication to an approved tuition fee increase, more students will drop out from schooling.

And because of this, she said the group and other cause-oriented sectors will never cease in staging protest actions.