Corruption in Education

The Asian Development Bank, in a report entitled “Philippines:  Critical Development Constraints” (December 2007), says that fighting corruption is one of the two top development concerns for our country.

There is no doubt that there is corruption in our educational system, perhaps not on the scale of the Malacañang scams involving ZTE, railroads, fertilizers, and swine, but enough to derail efforts to achieve “Education for All.”  I am not talking only of DepEd (which has, since the time of the crusading Raul Roco, moved down in the list of most corrupt government agencies) nor of TESDA (despite its highly publicized book publication scam) nor of CHED (where corruption is “moderate” since its budget is minuscule), but even of private schools (some known to pay for permits to open new programs).

It is about time we looked at the kind of corruption or evil, no matter how small, that stunts the development of quality education in our country.

We can begin with an anomaly outside the control of schools.

For example, you can go to Recto and get yourself a diploma and a transcript from any university in the country. Of course, if that university were ever asked if you graduated from it, you would be found out, but meanwhile, since academic and industry bureaucracies are often as bad as government bureaucracies, you can teach or work for quite a bit of time before anyone finds out that you misspent your youth. 

How do we help solve this problem? All we need to do is to have a database of graduates from all our schools. Even with a simple laptop, that is very easy to do. All we need is someone to encode the full names of graduates, with their dates of birth and some kind of identification card number (here’s an argument for a national ID number, similar to the American social security number), with the name of the school, the year, and the degree earned. That will enable anyone to just check if you indeed finished from Boracay University even if you have never been on a boat. (Yes, I am alluding to the Thai minister’s case.)

DepEd and CHED should get some funding (very minimal, because we need only one very fast typist and one very patient clerk, the latter to search all school lists of graduates) to get this database done.

Now let us look at anomalies within the control of schools.

There are a few, admittedly very few cases of school registrars being bribed to change the grades of students. Because the excuse can always be made that it was a typing or encoding error, these erring registrars get away with academic murder when a student suddenly passes or gets a grade high enough to get Latin honors. Since not too many teachers bother to double-check posted student grades, registrars or their assistants have a great opportunity to make a little money on the side.

There are a few, admittedly very few cases of secretaries being asked to get paychecks for their academic bosses, finding a way to cash those checks, and defrauding their own bosses of hard-earned income.

I speak here from personal experience not related to schoolwork. I used to write a weekly column for a newspaper (not the STAR) and knowing how newspapers tend to be a little late in paying their contributors (again, not the STAR), I did not mind it so much when, after about six months, I had not yet been paid anything.

I would ask my secretary periodically to call the newspaper, and she would always answer that there was no check waiting for me at the newspaper’s accounting office. I would loudly curse the newspaper within her earshot.

One day, when my secretary was out of the office, a messenger from the newspaper came with an envelope. It was cash from the newspaper. I asked the messenger how come I had gotten paid only after so long and why the pay was so small. He said that he had come in every week previously with payment for my column.

All the time that I was raging mad against the newspaper, a messenger had brought in, every week, cash from the newspaper. My secretary had signed the receipts, pocketed the money, and left me looking stupid with my ranting and raving.

Of course, I fired that secretary the moment she returned to the office. Well, not immediately, because I had to go through the usual due process.

If you think it is unusual for someone to get paid cash in these days of checks and ATMs, look again. When I was with DepEd in 2001, I got paid my salary in cash, and so did all of my staff. When Roco tried to start the use of bank ATMs for salaries, he got plenty of flak. Can you imagine why?  (If not, you should take Corruption 101.)

I know of some cases, again very, very few cases, where teachers complained about not being paid by a school, only to find out that their salaries had been collected by clerks all along. (To be continued)