On Thursday, March 5, members of Anakbayan New York/New Jersey joined students from different campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY) as they walked out from their classes to protest against the state’s education budget cuts.
Governor David Paterson emphasized in his state of the union address, the importance of investing in education. However, along with the Governor’s plan to cut budgets for basic services (including health care resulting in the shutting down of hospitals and job layoffs in the state of New York), education also seems to rank at an all-time low among his priorities.
In December 2008, Paterson announced a reduction of $698 million in the education budget for 2009-2010, 3.3 percent from the previous fiscal year. In addition, he recommended a 14 percent increase in tuition fees in both the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY), to be raised up to $620 and $600 respectively.
With the current economic turmoil, more students can no longer afford to go to private schools, thus, making them turn to the state's public institutions for higher education. This has resulted in a rise in the enrollment rate of SUNY and CUNY, with several campuses across the state becoming the stronghold of students whose parents have a low income, or of students who must work part-time to pay for their education.
"But with the state's education budget cuts and the proposed increase in tuition fees on the way, these would only allow the state to put the burden on students who do not have anything more to shell out. The state is railroading the path to commercialization of state and city colleges and universities in New York – the same institutions which are supposedly giving quality education to New Yorkers at affordable prices, or better yet, free of charge," says Yves Nibungco, deputy secretary general of Anakbayan New York/New Jersey.
As the class division becomes more apparent, it is also interesting to note the racial composition of students who turn to SUNY and CUNY for advanced learning. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute Report, people of color have reached 20 percent of the total population in SUNY and 69 percent in CUNY as of 2008 – no doubt including Filipinos, being the third largest immigrant community in the United States.
The progressive Filipino youth group also points out that an average of 3,000 Filipinos leave the Philippines each day, mostly having the same reason for migrating: prices of commodities and services soar high, but salaries and wages re¬main horribly low back home. Currently, about four million Filipinos are in United States hoping to acquire better lives for their families.
"Our parents brought us here to the United States to study. But what we are seeing now is exactly the same thing that's been happening in the Philippines year after year. We cannot afford the tuition fee anymore that’s why we had to stop," states John Miranda, a member of Anakbayan New York/New Jersey.
In 2007, due to budget cuts, the University of the Philippines (UP), a state university and supposedly the "national university" of the Philippines, increased the tuition fee of incoming freshmen by 300 percent. Being a model for learning institutions, this move by U.P. gave more reason for other schools, colleges and universities in the Philippines, both private and public, to charge students more for tuition and other miscellaneous fees, making education less accessible to the people.
Just recently, hundreds of students in the Philippines from various universities held a protest action in front of the office of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) in Quezon City demanding the immediate implementation of the moratorium on tuition fee increases.
"Without a doubt, we will do the same here in the big apple. We can't just watch and sit while states – both under the Arroyo and the Paterson administrations – deprive the youth of the basic right to learn. We shall not let this pass that while the state extracts money from the taxpayers of New York City to bail out the 'capitalists', more funds are allocated by the federal government for 6,000 U.S. troops to be sent to the Philippines in April, only to advance the interests of the fascist Arroyo regime and its patrons who benefit from the war machines – economically and politically," Nibungco adds.
