More Feasible Alternatives to the UPCM Tuition Adjustment

After getting permission from the MSC Chair to broadcast to UPCM Class Egroups my previous blog post UPCM Tuition Adjustment: Process vs Content, a handful of fellow medical students replied at length with more suggestions on how to stave off a Tuition Adjustment and still help the College in the process. Here are their takes on the issue:

1) Cost-cutting and austerity measures. This suggestion was sent in by a med student coming from a business-oriented family. Let's call her Sasha*. Sasha's family happened to discuss the pending tuition increase in the College, and she told the administration's reason of increasing Maintenance, Operational, and Other Expenses (MOOE) as the basis for the proposed increase. Her businessman brother commented that in the private sector, deficits as large as thirty percent (30% ) can be managed by streamlining of operations and heightened efficiency. Furthermore according to Sasha's brother, such austerity measures need not necessarily result to inconvenience - small sacrifices such as turning on only half of the airconditioning units in a room can translate to savings.

Come to think of it, private companies don't always increase product prices just to survive. Addressing expenditures while maximizing profit is part of an executive's business acumen. If we are to think of the UPCM as a private company (which of course it can never be), the proposal to increase the product's price (product here being a UP Medical Education) is somewhat akin to the manager succumbing to the pressure of competition.

Of course the administration can lay claim to having done that already, but as to what level of austerity we do not yet know. Now the typical knee-jerk response of the Task Force members who're dead set on a tuition increase would be to make students physically "feel" austerity measures so as to put tangible pressure to insist on increasing tuition. This they could possibly do, even as they have calendared several lavish and posh gatherings and parties celebrating the College's centennial.

2) Start a Trust Fund for the College's Needs. This suggestion, wherein a large bank account would be opened and maintained with only the periodic interest being withdrawn on occassion for use, has apparently been started. We have what we call the UPCM Centennial Endowment Fund (CEF).

Dr. Menchit Padilla, Head of the Resource Development Office, shares the following:

If at least 60% of the alumni for the past 50 years will offer a gift of at least P25,000 (or US$500) or P1,000 a month (or US$18 a month) for 25 months, we will reach our goal of 100 Million pesos which will serve as principal whose interest will be utilized for improvements and projects, i.e. faculty development, infrastructure, and research.

By her elaboration, it is quite feasible. And the intentions are clear - the beneficiary shall be the College in the form of improvements and projects. Presumably, before we can start on improvements and projects, we need to plug any perceived deficits first. So why not make coverage of excess MOOE expenses part of the CEF's objectives and spare the students an increased burden?

Again a knee-jerk response of the administration would be to argue that current UPCM students are well-off. We beg to differ, sirs and madams; and besides, if your intention is to target these "well-off" students by a tuition increase, you're going to fail because a lot of them are covered by enrollment priveleges. This is of course not to put in bad light UPCM students who are children of the College's faculty. They do deserve their priveleges on account that their parents work unpaid. [Note: Then again some faculty like our good Physiology adviser Dr. Ricardo T. Quintos noted that these WOC (Without Compensation Faculty) should not be complaining because they are given priveleges to practice and subsequently get referrals and charge professional fees in PGH's pay wards. But that's another issue.]

In contemplating the above proposals specially the CEF, I'd like to quote once more Dr. Padilla's message on the UP Medical Alumni Society in America (UPMASA) website. She wrote an interesting paragraph that, if the Tuition Adjustment shall push through, will never again apply to the next 100 year's worth of UPCM graduates (note the highlighted part):

As Seb Kho said in the letter sent with his donation, “we were all blessed to have been given the chance to be recipients of the best medical education in our country, to train under the best and most dedicated faculty, and to take part in the rich tradition of the UPCM. We who are graduates of the UP College of Medicine are so lucky; we obtained our training at a small fraction of the cost in the States!"

Now is the time to give back to the college a little of what we have reaped out of the healing skills that our dear UPCM equipped us with.

[Emphasis supplied.]

What reason shall UPCM's future alumni have to "give back to the college", if they would have obtained their training at the cost of those in the States?

*Names have been changed as per their request for anonymity.