In compliance with the Commission on Higher Education’s (CHEd) order to suspend on-site classes, Ateneo de Manila University decided to conduct online classes for the Intersession and First Semester periods of AY 2020-2021. Despite this shift, tuition and fees remain largely unchanged—prompting student groups to challenge the rationale behind such costs. This, along with other tuition fee concerns raised from other universities, has led CHEd to urge the institutions to justify their recurring fees.
The Loyola Schools (LS) administration explained the adjustments in this year’s tuition and fees through the LS Primer, including the witholdment of a CHEd-approved tuition hike and the reduction of other fees. No less, at a time when every cent counts, the price of education in the Ateneo must be placed under closer scrutiny.
Resounding calls
In an interview with The GUIDON, One Big Fight for Human Rights and Democracy convener Hen Namoca asserted that the LS administration must be transparent in clarifying the tuition fees for the academic year.“They have to give us the breakdown of the fees and tell us why students have to pay a huge amount of money just to have online classes,” they say.
Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan spokesperson John Lazaro shared similar sentiments, highlighting the need to justify the unreduced cost of tuition per unit. “Firstly, we don’t even know where it’s going to, […] where the standard asking fee for each course is going to. Is it going to pay the contractual faculty? How much of our faculty have been […] paid? We don’t know,” Lazaro says.”
Meanwhile, National Union of Students of the Philippines Deputy Secretary General Jandeil Roperos adds that students already need to bear the expenses on internet access, gadgets, and electricity to attend online classes. According to her, the Ateneo should use its profits from the previous years to mitigate the cost required to acquire new online facilities. Otherwise, Roperos says, the University should at least reduce the cost of tuition per unit to make Ateneo education more accessible for the students left financially challenged by the pandemic.
Reconditioned system
Amid students’ resounding calls for transparency from the LS administration, Vice President for the Loyola Schools Maria Luz C. Vilches, PhD guarantees that spending is determined by how they can best serve students. She explains that the University does not gain profit from the fees it collects, rather from “other investments.” Thus, the fees charged to students are completely spent for the term they enrolled for.
These charges fund the LS’ efforts to ease difficulties in the shift to online learning, concurrent with the Board of Trustees’ (BoT) mandate to freeze the University’s capital expenditures. Vilches assures that the BoT and LS hold numerous negotiations before they decide on expenditures.
One outcome of such discussions is the University’s decision to use Canvas as the learning management system (LMS)—subscription costs, as Vilches estimates, amounts to 500,000 USD. According to the Office of Management Information Systems (OMIS) Director James Gregorio, Canvas consolidates the community’s call for one single LMS and offers direct links to other paid resources such as the proofreading system Turnitin.
Following the purchase of the Canvas subscription, faculty and staff from across the University including LS underwent training to navigate the new platform. According to Science and Art of Learning and Teaching (SALT) Institute Assistant Director Galvin Ngo, the training consisted of three components: Introduction to online education, technical training on Canvas, and consultative discussions with faculty members. The Canvas subscription also included guidance from the LMS personnel to aid the trainees in using the platform’s features. The expenditures for both training and the online platform are now assessed under the restructured Online Infrastructure Fee.
Unlike the new expenses for online learning, the Library Fee remains unchanged despite the LS’ reduced use of the library’s physical resources. Rizal Library Director Vernon Totanes, PhD explains that even before the pandemic, 90% of the fees go to research databases such as JSTOR. “Right now we are using that 10% to pay for requests for additional electronic resources,” he says.
However, academic databases are not the only resource being adapted to a fully online semester. Gregorio explains that the LS administration’s subscription to Google Meet—which grants unlimited use of the application— is now nearing its expiration. Vilches says that after a series of consultations with the faculty, the LS administration is now in the process of procuring Zoom’s services in lieu of Google Meet. The management of these improved resources entails a need for more personnel, but the unchanged tuition fee restricts the LS from hiring more personnel for understaffed units such as OMIS.
“[Prospective applicants] will not come to us because our salary is lower than what they get from the industry,” Vilches says. In order to increase the salaries of non-teaching personnel, tuition would also need to increase, as Republic Act No. 6728 mandates that 70% of the tuition goes to the salaries of University personnel.
Balancing the sheet
In this time of economic recession, Vilches says that LS is already on a deficit in planning for next year’s budget, prompting the admin to closely monitor LS’ cash flow.
Nonetheless, motivated by the number of incoming freshmen, Vilches anticipates a good enrollment record for the first semester. However, this record is simultaneously met with an increase in the number of students who submitted promissory notes, thus deferring their balance at a later date.
This heavy wave of appeals for financial aid confirms Namoca’s remark that Ateneans are struggling to continue their education in the University. Amid the student body’s uncertainty regarding the urgency and legitimacy of tuition and fees, Vilches assures that they strive to aid as many students as possible. “We are a private institution that doesn’t get subsidies from the government. So we are really trying to balance what we can from our own resources, to be able to help these students in need,” she says.
Given the University’s limited means to provide aid, not all financially struggling students can be supported, leaving some behind and constrained by their pockets. Nonetheless, this reveals that although transparency manifests in Vilches’ promise that the LS administration will prudently use its resources, a truly accessible Ateneo education has yet to become a reality. Justified tuition and fees still present daunting costs, most especially for families who bear the brunt of the pandemic’s economic effects.
