SUCs - At A Dime a Dozen

State universities and colleges (SUC) are proliferating throughout the country. There are 110 of them as of last count. Many of these are not viable according to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad. Soon another state college will be added. Boxing champion and Congressman Manny Pacquiao is filing a bill for a creation of a state college in his district in Sarangani Province. While the aim is laudable, the end result is not going to be, judging from the experience of many other government-funded tertiary schools.

In the small city (many are saying it should not have qualified as a city)  where I live there is a city college touted as the first LGU (Local Government Unit)  college in the Visayas. A high school classmate of my child finished his four-year electronics course in the college. But when he applied for a job in a big electronics firm he was refused. It seems the school did not offer training that meet the standard of the electronics industry. He went back to a private university (this time an accredited one) and took up marine engineering instead. But what a waste of time.

I think the government, especially the national government, should focus its attention on the elementary education. Higher education should be left to a few state universities that should meet global standards. Perhaps there should only be one government university in each region. Each one should be properly equipped and manned by the best qualified teachers. Then the government should re-channel the budget now going to substandard SUCs and pour the money into the elementary schools and perhaps some high schools, too.

My three children went to public elementary schools. Wrong decision on my part, I now admit. Their counterparts in private elementary schools, whose teachers were ironically earning less than those in the public schools, came out better prepared for higher learning. I think it's partly because the public schools are overcrowded but mostly it's because the standard of hiring is strict in the private schools than in the public school system. And, yes, the books used in the private schools are better-screened by  their administrators while those in the public schools are either non-existent or riddled with errors that made Antonio Calipjo Go sad and mad all these years.

The half-baked products of our public elementary schools and high schools often meet up with ill-prepared teachers in our ill-equipped public colleges. Their diplomas are almost as worthless, in the eyes of would-be employers, as those one can procure in Recto.

The Cebuanos have a phrase for these SUCs and their graduates: tagduhay singko, a dime a dozen.