Iskolars ng bayan and youth party-list Kabataan slammed the K-12 program as a smokescreen for the privatization of state universities and colleges (SUCs).

"With K-12, the (President Benigno III) Aquino regime is making it appear that tertiary education is not anymore necessary and thus justify cutting off all state subsidy for SUCs," said University of the Philippines Visayas Student Council Chair and Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP Vice Chair for Visayas Raiza Llorico.

The student leader said that the share of government subsidy in the SUCs budget has steadily reduced from 87.74% in 2001 to 65.58% in the present year. She said the K-12 implementation only furthers this trend, leading to the eventual privatization of SUCs.

"As it is, SUCs are already no different from private schools in terms of high school fee rates. K-12 will only result in even higher tuition and other fee rates as public school administrators are forced to look for other sources of income outside of government subsidy," said Llorico.

UPV is now the most expensive university in the Visayas and the Mindanao with its P1,000 per unit base tuition. Under its Socialized Tuition Financial Assistance Program, 55.98% of the student population pay P600-1,000 per unit while only 13.225% avail of free tuition or full subsidy from the government.

According to Kabataan Party-list 4th Nominee and Panay Spokesperson Karlo Mongaya, this analysis is reaffirmed by the DBM's setting of a P30 billion budget ceiling for SUCs for the 2013 national budget in the January 31 National Budget Memorandum No. 113.

He said, the Department of Defense, meanwhile, was given a budget ceiling of P123.78 billion, up by 8 percent from the current P114.4 billion allocation. Budget ceilings indicate the estimated amount that the government will allot to its agencies even before the complete budget proposal is made.

There is meanwhile no commitment to substantially increase the basic education budget to address massive shortages. Mongaya said that it is simply absurd to insist that two more years of schooling under K-12 will improve the situation without allocating more money to address these shortages.

Iskolars ng bayan not only from UPV but other SUCs in the region are preparing for larger protest actions in the coming weeks to demand a higher budget for education. This June 21, state scholars will be trooping to the regional office of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).*