The question:
Should any student whose tertiary education will be sponsored in whole or in part by taxpayers’ money via a scholarship and/or via state-subsidized tuition be made subject to a service contract as a condition for admission to a state school or provision of a scholarship grant, the length of the service contract proportional to the cost of scholarship and subsidy?
The answer of the jester-in-exile: of course.
Shall we discuss this issue, folks?
Popularity: 1% [?]
I dunno, man.
Service contracts for training provided by the State don’t really solve the following underlying problems our society consistently fails to address:
(1) The ability of the society to productively employ its best and brightest.
(2) The ability of the society to fairly and competitively financially reward an individual for services he/she delivers as a result of said training.
(3) Failing Item 2, the ability of the society to present itself as a worthwhile investment of one’s youthful passion throughout one’s most productive years.
(4) Encompassing above Items 1 to 3, the ability of the society to present itself as an intellectually stimulating and challenging environment where great ideas are evaluated for their logical merit.
In mulling over the above four items, it may help to reflect on the following questions:
- :o Is Pinoy society a thinking society where ideas are regarded with a critical mind?
- :o Does the concept of “the Philippines” still invoke strong nationalistic sentiment in young people?
- :o Can this “hope” we try to convince ourselves of that the Philippines may be a prosperous country someday be substantiated?
Let’s make this easy. If we can answer “YES” convincingly to even just ONE of the above questions, then MAYBE we will have some reasonable bases for implementing measures to forcibly preventing the products of our state education facilties from leaving over a specified period after graduation.
Just maybe.
It’s an overdue undertaking given the continuing brain drain of the best and the brightest. But the ‘iskolars ng bayan’ more than being required to sign service contracts may indeed do so only grudgingly given the sad, nay deplorable, state of affairs. Most everyone want to vote with their feet except those “who have no choice” or among those genuinely imbued with a sense of how this nation is deeply wounded and betrayed by its own leaders.
i agree with you @jesterinexile that if government *pays* in part or in whole someone’s way through college, there should be a mechanism for payback. that’s just fair, imho.
there could also be a mechanism for the loan to be paid back in exchange of service or including thereof.
good points, benign0.
i think we should approach the service contract paradigm as a stopgap measure until your items 1 through 4 have some basis in fact.
The majority of college graduates in the Philippines come from private schools. I think the government should get out of the tertiary education business altogether and allow all SUC’s to be privatized. Likewise with the public schools, where the private sector does a far better job anyway. The only reason private school tuition is high is because the public sector competes unfairly with it!
We’ve tried Indentured Service Contracts before. They simply don’t work for anything but generate resentment for the govt.
better than HB4580, methinks.
As someone who has been teaching in private universities all over for the past six years, this is not necessarily true. They don’t call them “diploma mills” for nothing. Just think of those unis recently acquired by big conglomerates. 4 semester in a school year…what the hell can you learn in such a short time?
Most countries, especially rich ones, publicly finance education and health. The big exception of course is the US – where the private Ivy Leagues dominate. Should the private sector completely cede tertiary education to the private sector??? I cringe at the idea.
NOBODY IS FORCING ANYONE TO STUDY IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES. If you do not want to return the investments the Filipino people has put in your education, just go to a private uni.
sparks,
Yes, I agree that the best products of the public schools can be as good as the best of the private schools and of course both can beat out the mediocre in either camp. But what I meant by better was delivering a product called “education” well enough that significant numbers, especially in difficult technical courses like nursing, are employable abroad.
Even if their service is in foreign lands, their beneficent effects are most definitely domestic.
Besides we have a surplus of medical industry college graduates. There is no truth to the rumor that we don’t have enough doctors and nurses.
This singular achievement is almost entirely thanks to the private schools. Not as hoity toity as UP Diliman maybe, but worth billions to the Filipino people annually.
4 semesters in one school year??? shouldn’t that be a quadrimester then? more importantly, shouldn’t that be illegal?
but back to the discussion (i’m disappointed that an argument against service contracts was UP doesn’t need state support… strange, but there you are).
perhaps we can stick to one thread at a time; for instance, are subsidies analogous to investments?
Jester,
I think a student load program would work better.
yes, but i suppose the collection mechanism just might be difficult to enforce.
Would service contracts apply whatever course you are in? Would participants be paid at all for their service? What work would they do?
the service contract would for instance be having to work for government for X number of years, or not being able to apply for immigrant status to another country for 1.5X years… something of the sort.
as to jobs — perhaps some courses will have different service contract terms. mission-critical careers (healthcare, for instance) would have longer service contracts, say.
Jester,
I do believe we tried that already in the 70s, when medical school graduates had to do “rural service” for a year before they could go abroad. They all left anyway, grumbling at Marcos. Maybe it is impossible to force the spirit of public service into people.
Jester,
Siguro pwede isali dito ang mga pilots na lumilipat sa Commercial Airlines,kailangan mag serve sila for n years bago magresign. So far mga major pataas naman ang umaalis sa airforce pero pag lt. pa lang,stay put muna sila.
About nurses.
ngayon naman kulang ng ospital para sa mga nurses natin.
dati pa naman kulang ng hospital eh.
Sa UK masyado na mataas ang standard of living kaya nagsisilipatan sa Australia,NZ at sa iba pang lugar.
oops, we are talking about mga skolar ng bayan. I hope my example above would suffice.
“brain drain of the best and the brightest.”….
Puleez, is that even a problem in a country with a population of 80Million and in a world where travel is cheap, telecommunications is high tech, and nationalism-eklat is dead????
When one leaves, another is ready to take the place and as the CBCP encourages more sex, there will be more of those brains coming out of the woodwork.
shortage of nurses????
how many graduated this year? pagkarami-rami kaya.
Quantity does not equal quality. Even if we a million nurses waiting at the wings, if they come from second rate schools with loop hole training and poor skills, it doesn’t matter. Who, if they had a choice, would willingly go to an incompetent doctor, after all?
Unfortunately, if everyone leaves, then we don’t have a choice. If they paid for their tuition, then I suppose it wouldn’t be right for the government to order then to serve publicly. It’s a different thing with public schools where taxpayer’s money pay for one’s education. I suppose it’s only right that the people get a taste of what they paid for.
i, for one, would not lament the closure of ALL public colleges and universities. instead, i would bat for the strengthening of the private educational system on the tertiary level, which should include a liberal student loan and scholarship programs for the talented but needy students. for those financially able, it should be every man/woman for him/herself. the government should be vigorous in regulating and monitoring private institutions of higher learning and ensure the elimination of substandard and ‘rip-off’ schools.
the so-called “academic freedom” must be reviewed in such a way that, while freedom of thought should be preserved, doctrines, acts and expressions should be measured in terms of value to the public weal and public order, as determined by the law and jurisprudence. the interest of national safety and security must be the paramount consideration.
“Quantity does not equal quality.”
Yes, as a percentage, (given the pass results of PRC exams) one could argue that we produce very little just above the minimum standard
But as an ABSOLUTE number, given our large population, we still produce a LOT of top notch brains (and more every minute)
So if you say we have 1 Million nurses, and say only 15% are topnotch, that’s still 150,000 HIGH quality people.
To say we have brain drain is to insult the people who have opted/forced to stay in the Philippines and for Filipinos overseas to say the same is bordering on arrogance.
Plainly put, service contracts are COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE.
Countries with free education (Japan, Germany, UK…etc) know that all they have to do is provide high quality education then allowing individuals to use their qualifications as productive members of society. This, skilled and MOBILE workforce, has an overall positive net effect to their economies (where ever these graduates maybe…)
Has our government made it official that we have a shortage of health workers? Has there been an official study. Ano ang basis? Anecdotal lang?
I agree that government can CONSCRIPT health workers if there is indeed a problem and that problem should be officialized. But what I don’t get is the lack of planning. Someone mentioned stop-gap. Honestly, I don’t see our health-care situation getting better. As usual, the burden is passed on to the lower classes with way too much ease.
Nash, service contracts is not counterproductive. Even artists can make great art when they are forced to. Are you saying, iba ugali talaga nang pinoy and we are willing to sabotage the health of patients if we are forced to stay here?
About brain drain, I agree with Nash that it’s very difficult to judge the people left behind. It’s our institutions that lack the means to discover talent and even competence in complex tasks. It’s our institutions that are creating a “brain freeze.” I don’t think it’s brain drain. It’s not possible that we don’t have a great innovator or great artist, baka di lang naaapreciate dito. So I think madaming matatalino pa rin, but they are not harnessed effectively.