of unreal scholarship requirements

Officials in Valenzuela City, Metro Manila have allotted PhP 1.5 million for an internship program targeting tertiary school students, reports Kristine Felisse Mangunay for the Philippine Daily Inquirer (page A22, June 17, 2011 issue). This program is supposed to prevent students of financially challenged families from dropping out of classes. According to the report, students admitted to the program will be employed by the city government -- being assigned positions in day care and health centres, social welfare facilities, and other departments within Valenzuela City -- while they are enrolled in colleges or universities.

While well-meaning and optimistic in helping students with their expenses in school, the proponents of the program do have a very "stringent" requirement: the student's family's combined annual income should be PhP 20,000. This converts roughly to USD 458.... annually.... of both parents.

Are they kidding?

I had to reread this requirement a few times. I couldn't believe that this is correct. That figure must be a typographical mistake! 

To earn only PhP 20,000, each parent should only have an annual income of PhP 10,000. This translates to earning only PhP 833 per month, or PhP 38 a day, per parent! This income is way below the minimum wage set by the government. According to the National Wage and Productivity Commission website, the minimum wage in the National Capital Region (which encompasses Valenzuela City) is PhP 389 per day. Even people in the slums earn PhP 6,500 on average monthly. 

The income requirement implies that even college-age children of people living in the slums are too rich to qualify for the internship program in Valenzuela City.

The only way a parent could have an income that small is by being unemployed or perhaps being employed by an unscrupulous employer.

Are there really students in college whose parents only earn PhP20,000 annually?

I think that this is an important question to answer. 

In 2006, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies reported that families in the lowest income classes have, on average, six children. To provide basic needs to these six kids (food, clothing, shelter, access to clean water, sanitation, basic education, health facilities), each family has to definitely earn more than PhP 1667 a month. A salary that small wouldn't even last five days just for daily needs! That's according to 2003 IBON Foundation report. How could parents support kids through primary and secondary school if their food requirements aren't even supported?

If the extremely unrealistic income requirement of the Valenzuela City internship program is true, then the city government will be hard put to find students who are enrolled in college coming from this very low income bracket.

To find out how this college internship program requirement compares to scholarship grants, I had a read of the requirements of private scholarships available at the University of the Philippines Diliman. The lowest annual gross income limit to qualify should not exceed PhP 100,000. Other scholarship-giving organisations have higher income limits. These figures are more realistic than the one required by the internship program.

A grant is a grant. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Whether the income limit is too low in my opinion or is just a typographical error doesn't matter. Through the generosity of the City of Valenzuela, the rare breed of tertiary students from the lowest income classes are being given the opportunity to support themselves financially through college. The proponents of this project should be lauded for their initiative. If they find that the income limit is unrealistic, I hope that they could adjust it to be able to provide brighter futures to kids from disadvantaged sectors of the City's demographic.

I wish the City success and I hope that this project becomes a model or a case study for other cities to follow and to improve on.