Stakes in a meritocracy
In the chaos that reigned on July 30, when Metro Manila private high school students filing to beat the deadline for the submission of the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT) applications converged with the general enrolment of UP Diliman students, a concern overheard among the hundreds squatting in the surrounding sidewalks or massing outside the Office of the University Registrar (OUR) focused on one’s chance of being admitted to the state university.
Passing the UPCAT is required so one can enrol in a degree course in the eight constituent universities in the UP System distributed around the country. According to an official UP post, UPCAT applications have jumped from the 103,000 received for last year’s exams to the 167,000 received so far for the Sept. 15-16 exams this year.
About 14,000 passed, representing 17 percent of the 80,000 actual UPCAT takers in 2017.
What drives the thousands hoping to enter UP is the desire for free quality public education. Like other state and local universities and colleges (SUCs, LUCs), UP is covered by Republic Act 10931, also known as the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.
The law provides for, among others, free tuition, free miscellaneous and other school fees, and affirmative action programs in SUCs, LUCs, and technical-vocation education and training (TVET) programs registered under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).
As a consequence, RA 10931 spiked UPCAT applications. The UP System, in applying its academic standards for registration, will whittle down the aspirants.
For those who don’t qualify for UP, there is the option to apply for 111 other SUCs and 78 LUCs covered by RA 10931.
Nevertheless, the selection process of the UP System raises questions about the viability of equity in education. While free education is granted to all by law, entrance to an academically rigorous academic institution like the UP system still favors not the so-called disadvantaged students but those who are privileged to have their innate intellectual abilities honed by better nutrition, better academic preparation, and supportive parents financially capable of meeting the demands of higher learning beyond tuition and other school fees.
Can equity in education be within the grasp of Filipino youths marginalized by poverty, disability, and other factors?
Critics have expressed apprehension that the government’s subsidy of free college education in SUCs, LUCs, and TVETs will have the “unintended consequence” of benefiting the rich more than the poor.
The law “virtually asks a public school teacher in a rural area whose child did not qualify to a public tertiary education institution to contribute to the education of a car-driving child of a doctor in an urban area who qualified primarily because of better basic education preparation,” wrote Aniceto C. Orbeta Jr. in a July 5, 2017 article posted on Rappler. Orbeta is a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
Orbeta cited the lower entrance examination scores of grantees of the Student Grants-in-aid Program for Poverty Alleviation. These Pantawid beneficiaries, due to “poorer basic education background,” lose in competition with other students in the competition for “spaces in public tertiary institutions.”
Society must commit to share in enabling more so-called disadvantaged students gain access into public tertiary institutions. SUCs, such as the UP System, must institute affirmative action programs that can assist youths from marginalized households aim for and attain higher education and other opportunities.
The UP outreach program “Pahinungod” is worth continuing as it “offered” the services of faculty, students, and other volunteers to bridge communities to the full attainment of academic potentials. A meritocracy implies a collective stake.