The distinction as a “national university,” tax exemptions, a new composition of the policy-making body, more flexibility to manage the resources and freedom from the Salary Standardization Law (SSL) are among the promises of the new charter of the University of the Philippines.

Still, UP badly needs additional support from the national government to be at par with other universities in the region. Simply to increase the salaries of its employees, the country’s newly crowned “national university” needs to raise least P3.6 billion—an amount more than three times the income earned by the university in 2007.

UP professors cannot immediately expect higher salaries as a result of the passage of the new charter. Prof. Ma. Concepcion Alfiler, UP’s vice president for finance and development, said that the university does not have the enough resources for this.

The university, she said, needs to raise at least P3.6 billion to pay the salaries of its employees. The amount does not yet include the retirement and life insurance premium and is more than three times the income earned by the university in 2007.

Exemption from the SSL will also mean that UP faculty cannot avail themselves of the 10 percent salary increase to be given to government employees.

“We now have the legal basis for the pay scale but we have to generate the resources and that will take time,” Alfiler said. “The pay will stay but we can only add.”

The university, Alfiler said, can only augment salaries by offering professorial chairs, grants and though awards for published works in refereed journals.

National university

Republic Act 9500 (An Act to Strengthen the University of the Philippines as the National University), which was signed last April by the President in Cebu, gives the university more autonomy and replaces the outdated UP charter of 1908.

The new charter promises to bring more fiscal and institutional autonomy to the university. It also designates the UP as the country’s “national university.”

UP President Emerlinda Roman said that when they were still defending amendments in the Senate and in the Congress, the provision recognizing UP as the national university is among those provisions they could not afford to let go.

“It is very important to us to be recognized as the national university, in the same way that other countries have national universities,” Roman said. “We needed to have that recognition because higher education has been internationalized.”

Senator Edgardo Angara, a former UP president, also believes that distinction of being a national university is important. In a June 8 column for the Manila Times, he wrote that reference to UP as “state university” was lost since there are about 112 state universities and colleges, with each of them claiming the status of a ‘state university’.”

“The charter reiterates the premiere status of UP by making it the National University,” Angara wrote. “But the characterization of NU is more than the honorific title. In terms of preferences among the hierarchy of state universities and colleges, UP must always maintain the lead in budgetary appropriations. But there is also a corresponding obligation on the part of the National University.”

Former UP president, Francisco Nemenzo, however, said the distinction is only the description of all the changes brought by the new charter to UP—like exemption from SSL—which are not enjoyed by other SUCs.

“UP has always been the country’s national university,” Nemenzo told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak adding that other universities in the region refer to UP as the Philippine’s national university.

More flexibility and autonomy

The new charter gives UP more flexibility and autonomy in the management of its assets. Roman said it allows the university the freedom to utilize idle assets and eventually generate more income.

Some sectors in the university have expressed concern over the possible “commercialization” of education because of provisions in the charter allowing the use of assets of the university.

Roman, however, said that the students need to know the difference between commercialization of and the proper use of idle assets. “Commercialization is different. It happens when a learning institution merely becomes a diploma mill. It’s when a school merely accepts students and keeps them afloat, then increases the tuition.”

Nemenzo agreed and said that commercialization of education means “admitting students based on their ability to pay, lowering the standards to accommodate the tuition-paying students, selling diplomas, and passing failing students in exchange for donations.”

“All the great universities I know generate extra funds by putting to profitable use their assets like idle lands and inventions arising from research,” said Nemenzo who added that these measures allow universities to earn income to raise the quality of teaching and research.

Nemenzo recalled that before the construction of the UP Science and Technology Park in the 37.5-hectare vacant lot along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, some government agencies expressed interest in it. “If we decided to leave it, we would have lost it to them.”

The park is envisioned to be a venue for research and technology-based collaborative projects between the academy and the industry. Nemenzo said that project will also give the faculty a chance to get consultancy jobs without moving away from the university and provide students access to the equipment they need for their research.

Roman added that some of UP’s idle assets have become expense items. “We have half a mountain in Los Banos that needs to be reforested but we do not have the resources.” (UP’s Los Baños campus sits partly along the slopes of Mt. Makiling in Laguna province.)

Alfiler said securing the assets of the university has required UP to spend money. “We have to fence off the land and hire security guards to prevent the squatters from settling in.”

Roman said that students must understand that UP has been given a vast tract of land and is expected to generate income from them.

‘Erratic allocation’

Income generated from projects like this is expected to augment the budget that the university gets from the national government. UP, along with more than 100 SUCs, compete for the budget allocation of the government for higher education institutions.

Alfiler told us that UP has received “erratic allocation” from the national government and its approved allocation is way below the budget that the university needs. For instance, from 2000 to 2008, UP received only an average of 60.2 percent of its proposed budget. (See table below)

Note: The amounts do no not need include automatic appropriations for  Retirement and Life Insurance Premium (RLIP)

Source: UP Office of the Vice President for Finance and Planning

Not all of UP’s budget goes directly to the academic units since around 25 percent of it goes to the Philippine General Hospital. “When you talk of P6.23 billion budget [for 2008], one-fourth of this will go to PGH and the rest will be divided among the academic units of the UP system,”

She added that income of the university—from tuition, interest and rental income, and fees collected from hospital, legal research services and dormitories—augments the budget allocation by the government. (See graph below.)

However, she said that most of it goes to maintenance and other operating expenditures like payment of utilities and janitorial services. “If we do not have income, we will be just like other SUCs with rundown facilities.”

Budgetary constraint has also prevented the university from spending for new buildings and equipment. Investments on equipment and construction of new buildings, Alfiler said, are possible only if the university is able to save money.

“Whenever we have small budget, the allocation for equipment, new school buildings and special projects will suffer because we cannot make adjustments on the salary,” said Alfiler.

More savings for UP

University officials are expecting a lot of savings especially because the new charter exempts gifts and donations to the university from donor’s tax. Section 25 of the new charter also mandates exemption of equipment to be used for academic purposes from custom duties and charges.

Alfiler hopes that these savings will be used to buy new equipment, especially research facilities. “We need research facilities. Some of our professors and students who have studied abroad cannot apply what they have learned because we do not have the equipment.”

Roman said generating more resources will also lessen the pressure on students. She said in an interview that a mother of a chemistry student once complained that her daughter who enlisted for a 7 a.m. lecture class was not able to enlist in the 8:30 laboratory class because it was full and there was no other section. It turned out that there is only one equipment and only two classes—one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

“The student ended up in the afternoon class,” Roman narrated. “In the end, it’s expensive for the student. She had to eat lunch in school and wait for a few hours.”

Freedom from SSL

Apart from giving the university flexibility in managing its resources, the new charter gives the Board of Regents, UP’s highest policy-making body, the authority to design compensation packages for the faculty with freedom from the Salary Standardization Law (SSL).

Salaries of UP faculty range from P13, 801 for the lowest ranked instructors to P37,755 for the university professors and is just one-third or one-half of the salaries of faculty members in other universities. (See table of Salary of UP Faculty by Rank).

The minimum monthly salary of instructors is almost the same as the starting pay of newly-hired workers working in call centers in Makati. Meanwhile, the highest paid faculty members—university professors—in the university receive a monthly salary that ranges from P31,000 -P37,000. But according to the office of the vice president for finance and planning, only around 10 professors belong to this bracket.

Low salaries have been blamed for the exodus of UP professors. A professor told us that in a span of three years, seven professors from a college have left the university to seek more financially rewarding opportunities elsewhere. Three of them, the professor said, now work in New Zealand, one in Bahamas and three joined the Asian Development Bank.

“It’s sad (that) we are unable to retain the best faculty because we can only give them atrociously low salaries. We can only give them a third or fourth of what other universities pay,” Roman said.

Other faculty members, meanwhile, hold consultancy jobs to augment their meager salaries. The university calls this scheme the “limited practice of profession.” Francisco delos Reyes, who has been teaching statistics for 18 years, said that consultancy jobs have helped professors like him make both ends meet. The setup, however, is not easy since he needs to travel from his work to the university regularly.

“I meet clients in the morning and later meet students in my classes,” said Delos Reyes who also works as a statistical consultant in a company in Mandaluyong. Working in the private sector, however, helps him teach better because exposure to the industry helps him to avoid the tendency to be bookish.

He added that if the university can offer better compensation packages, he would really prefer working in the academe.

New BOR composition

The new charter also changes the composition of the Board of Regents, the highest policy making body of the university by adding a representative from the staff and by reducing the number of members appointed by the President.

The new BOR will be composed of the following:

• Chair of the Commision of Higher Education as Chair
• UP President as Co-Chair
• Chair of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture
• Chair of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education
• President of the UP Alumni Association
• A Faculty Regent
• A Student Regent
• A Staff Regent
• Three other regents who have distinguished themselves in their professions to be appointed by the President (At least two of these should be UP Alumni)

The new charter brings down the number of presidential appointees to the BOR from 5 to 3 and elevates the role of UP President from vice-chair to co-chair of the BOR,

Nemenzo said the new BOR gives the university “more weapons to fight back”. He said, however, that the independence of the board will still depend on the leaders of the university.

Student Regent Shahana Abdulwahid, meanwhile, told us that there is need for more vigilance because the charter still has no implementing rules and regulations.

“The students are happy but there is unrest because a lot of things are still unclear,” she said.

Centennial year

The signing of the law coincides with the university’s Centennial year and marks the end of the years to revise the 1908 UP charter, which still refers to the American governor general as the Philippines’ chief executive.

Roman said the old UP Charter no longer reflects the current situation because it was created during the American period and when there was only one UP campus.

“The university has expanded and has 7 campuses now. Before, there was only one university council because there was only one campus but now, we need more,” Roman said. “We want a new charter that would reflect the actual structure and composition of the university.”

Efforts to revise the charter date back to 1982 when then UP president Edgardo Angara created a code commission that would propose changes in the university charter. But the campaign for new charter began during the administration of former university president Jose Abueva, who created a Charter Review Committee before his term ended. (Click here to read the timeline of the efforts to revise the UP Charter)

Senator Francis Pangilinan, principal author of the bill, said during the passage of the bill that the new UP Charter would prevent the exodus of UP professors and improve the university’s competitiveness.---With reports from Hazel Sarah Federico (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)

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