Posts archived in College

4 comments

June 24, 2010

First week in UST

It’s been over a week since I started attending classes at the University of Santo Tomas. The feeling of being a clueless freshman wandering around campus without having the privilege of knowing anyone, it’s an amusing but all too familiar feeling. It brought back memories of being a high school freshman in Ateneo and a college freshman in UP Diliman. And I missed that feeling. It feels likes starting anew in a different environment with a clean slate, and I have the privilege of starting it right, of being anonymous, of just being another face in the crowd, with lessons learned from mistakes of the past.

The Sampaloc campus is also quite beautiful, with its paved walkways, manicured gardens and plazas, old and new buildings. It may not be as expansive as Diliman or Loyola Heights, but its very compactness makes one feel like being embraced by a small but diverse community. Walking to class in the late afternoons has been a pleasure. I find pleasure walking among hundreds of students loitering around the gardens and plazas. In Diliman or Loyola Heights, I can walk around campus without bumping into anyone. I walk out of the walls of UST and I find myself in the busy streets of Sampaloc, Manila.

These are of course, impressions of face value. In the next four years (or more? might even be less?) I will surely experience various disappointments and struggles. As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, there will come times when I will find myself in conflict with university rules, though, it’s not a prospect that I fear, confident of a sense of judgment of what is right and fair. There will come times when I will find myself holding on to my motivations for wanting to become a lawyer, there will be times I will want to just quit school for various reasons. But for now, here’s to looking forward to being a “Thomasian”.

3 comments

June 16, 2010

First day of school

More than two hundred youths from different universities and communities in Metro Manila marched yesterday, June 15, 2010, to the gates of Malacanang to protest the worsening crisis in education

Yesterday was the first day of classes for most schools, colleges and universities in the country. As millions flocked to their respective campuses, more than 8 million of our fellow Filipino youths and children will not even get to step inside a classroom. This marks one of the highest number of out-of-school youth in our nation’s modern history.

In Gloria Arroyo’s nine years in office, the nation has experienced budget cuts in education, tuition and other fee increases left and right and as mentioned, the highest out-of-school and drop-out rates in years.

Despite the constitutional guarantee that education is a right of each and every Filipino, going to school has increasingly been such a financial burden to millions of Filipino families, if they can get in a school at all. Even public elementary and high schools, with up to 61,343 in classroom shortage and 54,060 in teacher shortage, cannot accommodate all Filipino children, nor can they provide the kind and quality of education needed for national development. The Department of Education itself declared that there are as many as 5.6 million out-of-school children.

The students were able to squeeze past through the barbed wire barricades of Mendiola and march to Gate 7 of the Presidential Palace

The nation’s public universities, on the other hand, has been suffering budget cuts almost every year forcing them to extract tuition and other fees from their students and forcing them to sell resources which would otherwise have served their constituents. The Philippines actually has the lowest percentage of youths studying in state universities. In other countries, state universities and colleges accommodate majority of college-age youths. In the Philippines, we force them to either enroll in private institutions with steep tuition rates, or to not enter college at all.

While our parents’ wages have been stunted for decades, the government has allowed tuition rates in private schools and public universities to escalate. It has in fact almost doubled since Gloria Arroyo became President. In 2001, the national average cost per unit in colleges and universities was at P257.41. In 2010, it has almost doubled to P501.22. In Metro Manila where most of the country’s colleges and universities are located, it is worse. From P439.59 per unit in 2001 it has ballooned to P980.54 per unit in 2010. These don’t even take into account the long list miscellaneous fees being implemented by schools, which hide the real cost of education.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 comments

June 6, 2010

On rules prescribed by the Catholic university of the Philippines

Upon enrollment at a law school of a Catholic university in Manila, I was made to sign a conforme prescribing the kind of conduct and discipline the university imposes on all its students.

At the onset, I was taken aback. Not only because I had come from a relatively more liberal environment in the University of the Philippines, but I simply found it repulsive that there are specific prohibitions on what I’ve always thought were personal and political rights.

I understand the concept of “academic freedom” on the side of educational institutions and that they are granted institutional liberty to define what to teach and how to teach concepts and even character and values, but when institutions use this liberty to invade the realm of personal conduct and even appearance in guise of character-building, I think it is wrong.

Aside from prescriptions on personal and inter-personal conduct, there are also vague prescriptions on political actions such as rallies and strikes. In the list of policy guidelines, it is noted that in order to achieve and maintain “peace and order,” students must refrain from “joining boycotts, assemblies, parades or marches, or other gatherings that tend to create unnecessary noise and/or disturbance.” Another provision desists students from “instigating or leading illegal strikes/rallies or similar concerted activities resulting in the stoppage or disruption of classes.”

These provisions virtually bans all rallies, because all rallies create “disturbance”. It is in the very nature of such demonstrations. These provisions were used consistently to suspend and expel student activists in the university.

Read the rest of this entry »

0 comments

May 4, 2010

Just a week to go

I’ll catch up with my blog entries after this intense election season is over. Till then.

3 comments

April 8, 2010

Lakbay Norte 2010: Hundred Islands, Pangasinan

A view of the Hundred Islands in Alaminos City, Pangasinan, taken from the top of Governor's Island

January 29, 2010. It is rare to find a Filipino, young or old, who is not familiar with the Hundred Islands. Along with the Mayon Volcano and the Banaue Rice Terraces, the renowned group of islands in Alaminos, Pangasinan has always been a standard mention in textbooks as one of the best natural wonders of the Philippines. The group of islands has thus etched itself an almost permanent part in the consciousness of many Filipinos from childhood.

Corals and stones can be seen from the crystal clear water that surround the Hundred Islands

Despite its relative fame, however, the city government of Alaminos admits that the islands do not attract the number of visitors nor the investments they deserve, compared to other beach destinations in the country. I, myself, have never been to Hundred Islands before Lakbay Norte’s stop at Alaminos. And what a shame, indeed. The islands are unique gems incomparable to the Philippines’s other beach destinations.

Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries