The Corruption of Education
On the declining quality of education, we could blame so many material things: rundown classrooms, rundown books, rundown teachers and the declining budget for education. Out of the UNESCO recommended 6% of GDP, the Philippines only invests 2-2.5% of the GDP for Education. But that is not my concern in this post, yes we have deep rooted problems in the infrastructure and manpower shortage in education but we do not blame this thing that I think is equally a big issue when it comes to the quality of education: The Corruption of Education.
Our University has always took it as their to teach us more than the lessons, they also teach us the value of Academic Integrity. I’ve never seen a course syllabus that states that we will automatically get 5.0 and a possible case in the Student Disciplinary Tribunal when we cheat in any way possible.
I could say honestly that I didn’t cheat in any of the requirements in our course. First, there are no way a student could cheat in an Engineering Exam. Second, professors are better than PCOS machines in detecting plagiarism, when I say better, they always know if someone cheated on them, they never fail. Third, what is excellence without honor?
A CNN report exposes the Academic Black Market in the arcade sidewalks of Recto. I also experienced being offered by those sellers. For the willing cheater, anything could be bought in that part of Recto: fake diplomas, transcript of records, professional licenses, thesis, research papers and everything a desperate student needs to pass a particular course. Ironically, the avenue is named after one of Philippines’ brightest Senators, Claro M. Recto.
We could find the lack of classrooms so scandalous but not the decline of the Academic Integrity of students. Remember, one who cheats small time and gets away with it can be emboldened to do greater acts of cheating. The student cheaters now might be the cheating politicians of tomorrow.
In one case, UP has to revoke a PhD degree to a foreign student who was found to have plagiarized the dissertation. Our professor has to tell the story of her SDT cases files against her students to scare us in English 10.
It seems that more people are paying more attention to our shortages than this. It might be alarming already because there will come a time that this practice becomes normalized and will be hard to take out in our culture anyways. Corrupt practices start small like cheating on school until it becomes bigger and more evil. Some universities might not be paying attention, but it is already not getting better anyway.
The corruption of the society starts with the corruption of education. There will come a time that we will come to school not to learn good things, but learn to cheat, if the Academe will continue overlooking this. That is how the quality of our educational system will truly decline.
@1 month ago with 53 notes(± )
