A legacy of systemic neglect

The University of the Philippines has stood on its grounds for 118 years, commemorating its enduring mission of honor, excellence, and service to the nation. Yet behind this great legacy lies a scant reality: chronic enrollment complications, graduation delays, inadequate support for faculty, substandard facilities, and an education that is often a struggle for survival. While UP promises to dedicate itself to serving the nation and its brightest minds, this mission rots under neglect and systemic failures. 

On June 18, 1908, the University of the Philippines (UP) was established under Act No. 1870, thereby constitutionalizing an institution intended to provide higher and professional education for Filipinos throughout the country. The law, then, reaffirms UP’s status as a sanctuary of learning and scholarly thought. For many years, it has attempted to provide just that, but there is a very stark contradiction to this pursuit — the unrelenting presence of scarcity.

Every enlistment season in UP, the students undergo a semestral battlefield. The institution’s system allows its constituents the freedom to craft their own schedule, but this also means that the availability of units is unpredictable. In 2016, students experienced camping out on school grounds as early as 7:30 am just to enroll for several General Education (GE) classes. Before the current system of online enlistment, this manual system forced students to endure long lines, rain or shine. It has become almost like a rite of passage that in order to secure a slot, one would need to test the limits physically, financially, and mentally.

Today, UP has developed a digitalized pathway to enrollment, namely, the UP Computerized Registration System (CRS) and other local platforms like ISKOLAR and AMIS. Theoretically, under these new systems, one would believe that UP would have a more streamlined process of enrollment. While yes, they were designed to modernize the otherwise inefficient process, this did not solve the fundamental issue of scarcity. Due to the pandemic, the online system was used to ensure that students could safely register without going to campus. However, safety is one thing, but efficiency is another. In 2020, a graduating student from UP was delayed in his last semester when the lack of alternative offerings for facility-dependent courses prevented him from completing his graduation requirements on schedule. This experience reflects the reality of UP’s student body. Despite the platform itself being improved to some extent, students are still forced to watch as slots dwindle for their classes, to compete against each other just for a seat at the table, and swallow down the reality of being delayed. 

The practice of professors’ prerogatives (or prerogs) is another manifestation of students’ desperation and the faculty’s disenfranchisement. Aside from the fact that professors are already stretched thin just to be able to accommodate the large student demand, prerogs have become an informal mechanism for students to plead for access in the classes they are supposed to be granted in the first place. The faculty itself is not to blame for such systemic inconsistencies, nor do they particularly benefit from these structures — rather, they also emerge as a casualty. This much can be said, especially as a result of UP Diliman’s College of Arts and Letters fire that occurred on April 16, 2016. 

10 years later, the faculty is still reeling from the effects of the blaze, holding an outdoor demonstration last April 7, 2026, in protest of the university’s inattention towards the department’s lack of facilities and overcrowded offices. Such measures of defiance emphasize the extent of this neglect, wherein not only students suffer the consequences of a substandard structure, but also the educators who are forced to make the gutter seem like a decent venue of learning. The sole purpose of a university is, first and foremost, to be able to provide education for its students at the very least. However, even this singular purpose has become something UP students must beg to receive, and the faculty must fight to deliver. Education, in this light, has morphed from an obligation to a conditional opportunity.

From 2016 to 2020, the same problem persisted, and continues to be present today. It has become so normalized for students to experience such systemic failures that the once comical saying of “Mahirap makapasok sa UP, pero mas mahirap makalabas” has evolved from a joke to an alarming reflection of student experience. What is supposed to be a 4-year program becomes delayed for another two, sometimes more. 

Hopeful youth from all over the country take the UPCAT, carrying their dreams and hearts in their sleeves, anticipating that the institution would aspire for their ambitions along with them. Students leave the comfort of their hometown optimistically, while their parents entrust their children to UP, believing that it will offer refuge to its scholars with careful hands. Instead, students find their dreams haphazardly and carelessly put through the wringer by an inconsiderate system and an institution that does the bare minimum to change it. UP, for the last 118 years, has failed to successfully mitigate the problem of scarcity, often at the expense of the people it claims to serve. Its promise of excellence rings hollow when student hardships become a prerequisite for attaining it.

However, the root of the problem does not only come from the UP’s administration alone — it is also a byproduct of the government’s continued neglect and frugality. Throughout the years, the UP system and multiple SUCs have been faced with extreme budget cuts, causing insufficiency of funding to personnel services, faculty and staff salaries, and facility maintenance. In 2025, UP faced its highest budget cut in over 9 years, from an allocated funding of P24.77 billion in 2024 to a reduced P22.69 billion. Granted, what followed in the succeeding year is a historic budget hike of over P25.82 billion in 2026, according to the proposed National Expenditure Program (NEP); it was still insufficient in fulfilling UP’s budget proposal of over P46.85 billion. By mandating the existence of UP, the state legislated access to education for all, but quickly starved it of the necessary funding to make that mission tangible. If UP is the manifestation of the state’s pride and joy, then its love is substandard at best.

The consequences of these budget cuts extend far beyond these enlistment concerns and deteriorating facilities, but also manifests itself through the intrusive evidence of a state university being increasingly capitalistic. Such examples can be witnessed through the construction of the Dilimall, which gained public flak for focusing on commercialization and revenue-generating interests rather than expanding student housing. 

UP Diliman’s dormitory services have had a long history of the inability to properly fulfill demand, forcing students who rely on alternative housing to turn to community initiatives such as the Facebook group “UP Diliman Alternative Housing Portal”. Even as students express their discontent for the profit-driven Dilimall, the university’s response is the bright, offending lights of a Power Mac Center, occupying the space that could’ve been dedicated to students’ refuge. 

With the current trajectory of UP being commodified and neglected with its constituents as the inevitable sacrifice, it would be no surprise if, in its next few anniversaries, the institution has already rotted from the inside out. The persistence of these issues would mean scarcity could become so deeply embedded into the system that UP’s structural integrity would collapse. Even if students continue to be admitted into the university, their education would be increasingly competitive, exclusionary, and practically unattainable. 

Yet, even for those who can secure slots and be granted their scraps of learning, their education quality is already compromised by burnt-out, overworked faculty who would be forced to teach under inadequate situations. While these outcomes are already grim, UP would become even more eroded as it begins to have a greater reliance on commercialization, redirecting priority from its people to the profiteering corporations.

To be an “iskolar ng bayan”, then, is to watch the promise of an accessible education be repeatedly betrayed. However, this is not supposed to be the status quo, nor should it be the enduring lesson that comes after hardship. It should be fuel for the UP administration to reform systems that leave their students and faculty disadvantaged, and for the government to provide consistent and sufficient funding for the scholars that they claim to serve. 

Perhaps, as the university nips this neglected system in the bud, UP would once again find the true essence of its mission of honor, excellence, and service to the nation. Improving its enlistment process to provide slots conducive to the school population, hiring more qualified professionals to teach classes, subsequently securing a comfortable working environment, and proper budget allocation to prevent commercialization are solutions holding the best potential for improvement. Paired with adequate government support, UP could slowly dismantle this persistent systemic neglect and regain its status as the heart of the nation’s academe.

On its next anniversary, the collective hope of UP’s constituents lies in a future where students don’t need to prove that they are deserving to learn, where the educators’ hard work in teaching is complemented by facilities that allow it, and a university truly working in servitude of its people. In its 118th year, UP students and faculty have inherited the same struggles from their predecessors, even under different administrations, policies, and systems. Thus, to truly celebrate the institution’s existence is to mark the departure of this cycle of systemic neglect, and to make education accessible and guaranteed.