EDITORIAL - Helping education prevail over the crisis

This year will be a very difficult year throughout the world. And while our consumer driven economy will not be as devastated as the industrialized and financial giants, many of our people will still be biting the dust because of built-in unpreparedness.

As a poor and struggling country, many of our people have never hauled themselves out of the rut of a hand-to-mouth existence. The culture of saving for a rainy day never took root in us for the simple reason that there was really nothing to save.

It will be more devastating in the developed countries because once their economies collapse, their people will be forced to eat into their savings. Here we do not have savings to eat into, so it will still be the same old grind for many.

But it will be more difficult because huge numbers from our vast army of overseas workers will surely become casualties of the global economic meltdown. And once these displaced workers start coming home, they will surely join the drain on available resources.

Many things will have to be sacrificed because of this bleak scenario. And the sad reality is that, in our order of priorities, which is often defined by immediate needs, it is always education that all too often gets to be sacrificed.

Thankfully we have educational institutions that have long made it their policy to always keep an ear to the ground in order to anticipate and adjust to the different upheavals of life, that in so doing, measures can be done to prioritize the survival of education.

One such institution is the University of the Visayas, whose motto of Love and Service to Humanity has made it a pioneer in such student-friendly policies as the study now pay later plan and in-house employment recruitment assistance centers.

Faced with the impending gloom painted by most experts, UV again took the lead by announcing a decrease in tuition fees by a whooping 10 percent starting this Summer term. That should help parents reassess their options and hopefully keep their kids in school.

Providing for education is never easy, even for those who can afford it. But it must never be sacrificed by hardship or inconvenience because it is an investment in the future. Challenges will always be there. How we meet them to define our future makes the difference.