EDITORIAL - Free SCU education has a tradeoff somewhere

President Duterte should take a long hard second look at his promise to make college education in all state colleges and universities totally free. To be sure, it is a laudable move. But things are not what they seem in these schools. Far from being schools for poor but deserving students, many of their students are actually rich kids whose families can very well afford to send them to the country's elite private institutions of learning.

That being so, it is safe to assume that for every rich kid whose family can very well afford to send him to any of the country's top private schools, there is a poor but deserving kid who did not make it because the slot that was supposed to be his has gone to someone else. And that is very unfair. What makes it even more ironic is that many of these students are the same ones who are often in the forefront of protests against life's many abuses and inequalities.

It may be asked why rich families send their kids to schools that are ostensibly for poor but deserving students. The answer is simple. These rich families are no different from any other families. Rich or poor, every family would want the best for their children. And it cannot be denied that state colleges and universities have some of the highest educational standards there are.

In that regard, it is easy to see why so many rich kids find their way into these state colleges and universities. How these rich kids managed to enroll is anybody's guess. Again, there is no dispute that rich kids have as much right as anyone else to better education. But the problem is, pursuing that right in state colleges and universities can often come at the expense of poor and deserving students who get left out as a consequence.

And now comes an even greater inequity in the form of totally free college education. The rich who are already enjoying what is truly due others will get to enjoy even more. Now they don't have to pay anything anymore. On the other hand, those who have been left out and have to make do elsewhere, do so under very terrible conditions because government is only occasionally benevolent. Most of the time it is negligent.

What a tragic development it is to let the rich get the best education for free while many of those who can hardly eat three times a day and have to study under leaking roofs and in candlelight do not get as much as even a decent classroom to study in. To this day, in fact, many schools hit by supertyphoon Yolanda have not fully recovered and regained their educational footing that was already wanting in the first place.

While there is no beef against government doing everything to produce the best minds there are from state colleges and universities, it should not mean a free ride for those who can afford it, and certainly not at the expense of those who need free education more. Surely government can help state colleges and universities in ways other than totally free education because the money needed to sustain this idea will have to come from money that is more needed elsewhere.