The Cost of Education in the Philippines

If you ask Filipino parents about their dreams for their children, one inevitable answer would be “I want to be able to send them to good schools.”

This is hardly surprising, for we are a country that values good education. We view college diplomas as our children’s passport to a better life. Many a mother and father have reminded their children, “There is no better legacy I can leave you than your education.”

So during our most productive years, we make it our top priority to send our children to the best schools we can afford.

But are we prepared for how much “the best schools” will cost us when our children are old enough to enroll in them?

Elementary and High School
When we say the best schools, we are usually thinking of big names: Ateneo, La Salle, San Pedro Poveda, Assumption College, Colegio de San Agustin, etc.

If your child is entering grade school in SY 2013-2014 in one of these schools, expect a tuition fee of at least P84,000* – but keep in mind that this figure covers tuition fee alone. When you add in the registration fees, special fees, miscellaneous fees, etc., that figure can easily increase by as much as 50%, so you’ll end up shelling out over a hundred thousand pesos per child per year.

Now consider this: The average tuition fee increase rate in Metro Manila is 12% per annum. If such is the case, then your first grader’s 2013 tuition fee of P84,000 could reach P186,000 by the time your child is in eighth grade(again, that’s just tuition fee).

Now let’s presume that your child will attend the same school for high school, i.e., grades 9 to 12. High school tuition fees are generally higher than grade school tuition fees, so the school that charges a first grader P84,000 today are most likely to be charging their freshmen P95,000. By the time your first grader reaches high school, that P95,000 would have inflated to around P235,000.

“But schools won’t always raise their tuition fees by 12% every year, right?” we weakly protest.

Well, that is also a possibility. So let’s try a more modest computation based on a 6% increase every other year. With such figures, your child will enter first grade at P84,000; graduate from middle school at P100,000; and enter high school at P135,000.

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College Education
The good thing about elementary and high school education is that these are basic human rights. If you’re truly in a pinch, you can rely on the state to educate your children for free, through the public school system.

College education, however, is an entirely different story. No matter how you look at it, college will always be a privilege, not a right. Not even Canada provides free college education to its citizens; the Philippines, needless to say, cannot afford such a thing.

Nonetheless, the Philippine government still makes an effort to subsidize college education as much as it can. For most students in Metro Manila, the options for state-subsidized college education are either the University of the Philippines (UP), which you can only enter if you pass a very stringent entrance exam, or the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

If your child opts out of state-subsidized college, he or she will then be looking at private colleges and universities. Tuition fees in private colleges and universities today range from around P900 per unit at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran, to around P2,300 per unit at De La Salle University (DLSU).

Incidentally, the University of the Philippines, although state sponsored, now charges P1,500 per unit, from just P300 per unit fifteen years ago. That is clear evidence that, indeed, it is possible for a school to implement a 12% tuition fee increase yearly.

At these rates, how much will it cost you if your child wants to go to college in UP? Thirteen years from now, UP could be charging P5,800 per unit. At 15 units per semester, that would be P87,000 per semester and P174,000 per year.

What about DLSU? Its P2,300 per unit could reach P9,700 per unit in 13 years. At 30 units per year, that would cost you P291,000 per year in tuition fees alone.

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A Less-Conventional Option
Not all of us can afford to spend a hundred thousand per child per school year, but all of us want good, personalized, value-laden, bully-free education for our children. Sad to say, this makes most public schools (and even many private schools) a non-option.

The good news is, there is another option that today over three thousand parents in the Philippines have already taken: homeschooling.

When you homeschool, you have more curriculum options for your children. Some of them cost more than some private schools; most of them cost less. Miscellaneous fees are minimal because the child’s education is accomplished at home.

Inside a home school, student-teacher ratios are phenomenal. Depending on the number of your children, it could be as low as 1:1. Education is personalized, infused with your very own values, and the environment is 98% guaranteed bully-free.

If you wish to learn more about homeschooling in the Philippines, there are many Filipino blogs and bloggers you can consult. There are Facebook groups you can join, with highly active and very helpful members.

Yes, we all want good education for our children. It is every parent’s dream, a legacy that can never be stolen.

Anything of such high value demands a high price, and the prices will only go higher. But price does not necessarily mean money; it can be in the form of time, effort, parental attention – something you, as a parent, can freely give.

* Colegio de San Agustin tuition fee rates, SY 2012–2013

Image from drjohncarollo.com