When Education ceases to be a Vehicle for Upward Mobility

Tucked in a densely forested northeastern corner of Quezon City lies University of Philippines-Silliman, the main (and the largest) campus of the UP system that is the cornerstone of the country’s publicly funded tertiary education system.  Every year, 2000 freshman from all over the country, selected based on scores on a tough and highly competitive entrance exam, enters the campus, receiving a heavily subsidized education courtesy of the Philippine government.

The students are supposed to represent a snapshot of all different groups in the country.  Because students only pay 700 pesos per course per semester, even the poorest of the poor can afford to give a shot at taking the exam and potentially changing their own lives by matriculating, without worries of financial costs associated with 4 years on this extremely spread out school.  It is, after all, on this campus that the best and the brightest of the country, the elites that control her destiny, spent their academically formative years.

Visually humble (filled with concrete buildings reminiscent of the standard architecture in a state university in the US), the UP campus nonetheless does not hide its ample functionality.  Despite having only 8000 undergrads and possibly even fewer graduate students at any time, every department is given its own multi-story building, surrounded by greenery and open fields.  Founded on the same location in 1903 (when the whole area was rural) and being on top of the college funding food-chain clearly does help.

But even in such supposedly egalitarian and well-funded public university, a feeling of elitism does seep out upon a brief second thought.  Students can choose from majors as diverse as International Relations, Music, Marine Science, and Statistics, all taught by a good faculty with good connections, speaking in clear English.  To deserve the honor of being immersed in such an environment in four years, the students would not be normal people even well before their first steps into the campus.

Let us remember for a second that this is a country where secondary public school resources are so little that students have to choose morning or afternoon “shifts” to attend.   Few teachers can speak proper English and are paid so little and so late that many are busy extorting their students with overpriced books and lunches just to make ends meet.  Parents, with little sexual education and access to contraception, end up with number of offspring exceeding their meager financial resources to feed, not to mention educate. 

With such a background, for most students even with genetically disposed above-average intelligence, taking the UP admission test will be littered with obstacles much graver than simply money matters.  Ultimately, those who even have the guts to take the entrance exams will be sons and daughters of high-level white-collar professionals, major business owners, and landed gentry with strong localized political ties.  The Americanized elites, through higher education, ensure their posterity continues the family tradition. 

Of course, there is no need to single out UP for this purpose.  In a nation where UP hoards a disproportional sum of public funding earmarked for colleges, all other good schools in the country end up being privately funded.  Surely enough, the demographic there will be even more skewed, with high tuition and lack of institutionalized financial aid even the brightest and most capable students produced by the lower classes.  In comparison, UP is still a paradise of equality.

But understatements aside, the reality is harsh.  Tertiary education in the country, rather than being a means for the intelligent to equip themselves with right qualifications to attain high-paying jobs, have become institutions where high-paying jobs are retained in a small circle.  In other words, rather than generating upward social mobility, these schools are in essence rites of passage for a younger generation to retain their parents’ social statuses.  Education system supporting hereditary nature of social class is disturbing, to say the least.