blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

The unpleasant reality of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's 1.39 billion peso budget cut for next year has finally dawned on faculty, staff and students of the University of the Philippines , the Philippines' national university as defined by law. Administration officials have warned university constituents that the university will likely not hire anyone for next academic year. This includes non-academic staff (clerks, records examiners, department secretaries etc), research staff and faculty. This also means that professors who will retire at the end of this year won't be replaced by young assistant professors, research projects and programs can't hire new graduate students to work in the labs, and no new clerical staff will be hired. And we haven't even touched upon the subject of salary adjustments and promotions, which are even more likely to be cut or put on hold! This bodes ill for the university (and a "baptism of fire" for the new...

I got the email about University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman retired janitor Meliton Zamora getting 0.92 pesos as his retirement pay. I have known Zamora aka Mang Milton since he swept the floors whilst singing early in the morning before my 7:00 AM English 1 class. However some students had a closer relationship (financially) since he guaranteed their loans with the student loan board. Even with its then low fees, students had a hard time making ends meet since money was needed to pay for paper, food, school supplies and dorm fees. In a sense the socialized tuition fee scheme was meant to answer this but it could never do so completely. As for student loans, one of the first things that a newly hired prof or instructor learns is NOT TO GUARANTEE student loans since students rarely if ever pay for these. Even if the loans are quite small, when retirement time comes, the process of clearing accountabilities with the university becomes a tedious process. One may have his/her retirem...