Dancing Without Music: The ANTI-TOFI Position Paper of the Student Councils

When standing for a good cause, accurate fact-gathering and listening to stakeholders are two important elements in crafting an impactful policy solution. Adopting misaimed facts and not listening to key stakeholders is like dancing without music: it makes one look ridiculous. These were the exact words I used to describe the latest position paper released by the University of San Carlos – Supreme Student Council (USC-SSC), alongside the Conglomeration of Student Organizations (CSO).

Last March 2, 2026, the USC-SSC and CSO released a position paper concerning the 6.7% increase of tuition and other fees for the upcoming school year. In all rational sense, no student desires an increase to the cost of their education. Although I respect and salute the intention of the abovementioned organizations in fighting for more affordable and equitable education, I believe that the means to achieve a desirable end must be reflective of the truth, taking proper context into consideration.

On the third of March, I submitted to the Council a letter which pointed out key faults in the arguments of the Position Paper, including a slippery slope argument, faulty associations, and a disregard for underlying economic realities. Position papers containing these kinds of machinations tend to solicit absurd conclusions from the reader, and hence can be regarded as misinformation disguised as diplomatic contention.

For the average reader, allow me to summarize and point out the things I have written in my response letter to the USC-SSC and CSO:

1.  You cannot draw conclusions merely from correlation, as correlations never prove causal relationships.

2.  The use of headline inflation with respect to rising educational costs should be used more prudently, as there is no strong association between the two. Rising education costs are more appropriately measured against core inflation, as the latter removes volatile components of inflation. Furthermore, using a single time-window to compare effects of an issue across time is biased and misleading.

3.  Inflation only marginally contributes to rising education costs. The real culprit behind rising education costs is more likely institutional and microeconomic in nature, rather than heavily reliant on inflation. I acknowledge, though, that inflation may be an influencing factor for both the University and the students, the clientele of the University.

4.  The notion of a 6.7% increase in tuition and other fees versus a 2.0% inflation rate general cost-of-living experienced by households is inaccurate and very misleading. The effects of inflation against a need to increase prices is marginal and more felt in the long-term. The only relationship existing in their position paper is numerical (where 2 is more than thrice greater than 6.7). This notion alone is misleading.

5.  A firm, whether with a profit motive or with no profit motive, may need to increase the prices of its goods or services as a response to lower purchasing power, competition. The University has a motive of having better teachers, better facilities, and better equipment. However, to achieve such, because of competition and general rising of costs, the University needs to increase prices to compensate for weaker purchasing power of the Peso. (and as much as people don’t like to admit it, signs of improvement are gradually showing). Long story short, the case of the university is like a flower in a garden: you cannot expect a flower to bloom so beautifully if you deprive it of enough water to grow and be healthy.

In the end, it is the best interest of the students that both the student body representatives and the University are working towards. Both the demand and supply side for Carolinian education are constrained into making decisions that benefit them. Most importantly, behind the numbers and the need for development, there are people, breadwinners and working students, who are pained by a necessary increase of fees. Despite these realities and the desire to alleviate them, policy must be guided not merely with an objective, but also by unadulterated facts.

WRITER: Ken Isaac Boltiador
VISUALS: Kaye Abellanosa