Sad State

College attrition a staggering 50%
Metro Manila enrollment on 10-year slide

Despite the effort of 8 million Filipinos toiling abroad to send their children to school, the number of college students enrolled in Metro Manila has been steadily dropping in the past 10 years.

From 371,000 college students tallied by the Commission on Higher Education in 1998, the number dropped 10 percent to 331,000 this school year.

While the lower number could be a result of more colleges being put up in the provinces, CHED officials themselves say it is lack of money that keep the youth out of school.

There is also a perceived trend that students drop after the second year in college to go to work as agents in call centers.

Considering that population growth has been steady at three percent per year in the past decade, the number of students, at the very least should have gone up that much.

Using population growth as gauge, the number of college students by this year should have reached 480,000 meaning 150,000 students or close to half of those enrolled fell down the cracks, out of school and forced to work and deprived of chance to get college education.

Lawyer Julito Vitriolo, OIC of the Executive Director’s Office of CHED, said there would be less enrollees in the next few years as a result of the weakening economy.

Considering that growth last year was at a 30-year peak, yet enrollment dropped, schools are bracing for worse times.

Parents, he said, cannot afford tuition of private schools, resulting in the exodus from private to cheaper schools or state colleges.

"A lot of students have transferred to PUP and TUP, because the tuition is much cheaper there", Vitriolo said.

PUP enrollees have risen from 29,667 in 1998 to 33,593 this year.

In contrast, Centro Escolar Univeristy’s students dropped from 27,370 in 1998 to 14,702 this year.

Adamson University where tuition is cheaper, registered a 27 percent growth in enrollment to 19, 967 from the previous academic year, 15,686.

Arellano University Manila registered a 29 percent growth in enrollment to 9,470 from the previous academic year of 7,318.

PUP vice president for administrative affairs lawyer Augustus Cesar said the state university has more enrollees that their facilities can accommodate.

"We don’t even know what to do with them," Cesar said.

Cesar said CHED is asking Congress to increase PUP’s budget. He said PUP needs P1.8 billion, less than one percent of the total education budget of P181 billion and only half of the P3.2 billion budget of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

State colleges complain that in comparison with other Asian countries, the Philippines is only allocating education 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), compared to Malaysia 6.2 percent, Brunei 3.7 percent, Indonesia 3.6 percent, Singapore 3.1 percent and Thailand 4.2 percent. GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.

Meanwhile UST registrar Rodolfo Clavio, said that UST has been able to maintain the number of its students.

Clavio expects other schools whose students are supported by OFW money to bear the brunt of the crisis.

He said that the expected fall in remittances from OFW parents could, in the coming years, translate to a decline in enrolment.

"A lot of our students here in UST have OFW parents. Since these students are partially dependent on OFW remittances, a decrease in remittances would result into a decrease in enrolment," Clavio said.

(From Malaya)