PRESS RELEASE
People Power 2's Young Heroes Deserve a Break from Tuition Hikes

JOINING tomorrow's student-led National Day of Protest, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan called on the Macapagal-Arroyo government to consider the "just demand" for a moratorium on tuition fee increases.

"The student protests are justified. Governments, the current one included, have abandoned the youth and allowed capitalist educators to milk superprofits from the rotten educational system that they keep," said Bayan Chairperson Rafael Mariano.

"We challenge the Macapagal-Arroyo government to work in favor of the youth's right to education and to stem the greed of capitalist educators. Besides, the youth deserve it for actively working in the oust-Estrada campaign. A moratorium is in order," Mariano said.

Tomorrow's protests which includes walkouts, boycotts and a 1:00 pm rally at Mendiola Bridge are led by the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP).

Over 350 colleges and universities nationwide upped their fees by an average of 13 percent this school year. The list includes several state-run schools like the University of the Philippines. Eighty-five percent of tertiary schools are privately-owned.

Mariano asserted that the "consultation" process remain flawed and tilted in favor of capitalist educators. "Students and parents do not have any chance of fighting off the capitalist educator's voracious drive for tuition fee-induced profiteering. All the so-called consultative meetings are a sham and the various complaints lodged before the Commission on Higher Education will prove this," he said.

The Bayan leader explained that schools fees were the first to be deregulated in 1982 by virtue of the Education Act of 1982.

"Their premise is that capitalist educators may run schools better if given a free rein on determining their fees. Unfortunately and to the detriment of the youth and the nation, this policy brought forth escalating tuition hikes and plummeting quality of education," Mariano said, referring to the decline of the Philippines schools in the annual Asiaweek survey and the Third International Math and Science Study.

"At the same time, we find schools in the list of top profit-making companies and several of them putting out expensive multimedia advertising campaigns that sell their degrees for steep rates," said Mariano. (Kalovski Itim Online News Service, July 2, 2001 )