February 4, 2002

Letter from Father President to the Ateneo de Naga Community:

The Ateneo de Naga University is a healthy educational institution in Naga and Bikol today because of the support given it by our community – our faculty and staff, our students, our students’ parents and our many benefactors. Part of this support has been the general acceptance of the fact that if the Ateneo de Naga University is to grow as an educational institution – as grow it must in a challenging global world! – it must
steadily and regularly raise its tuition to provide the university with a competent and decently-paid faculty, but also to effect regular improvements in infrastructure and instructional facilities.

Thus, since the turn-around of the Ateneo de Naga from a moribund institution on the brink of closure in 1989 to the vibrant university it is today, the Ateneo de Naga has increased tuition and various fees every year.Fr. Raul Bonoan, S.J., my predecessor, whose vision was that Naga and the Bikol region deserved a first class educational facility that was Filipino, Catholic and Jesuit, initiated the annual increases. They were increases that not only saved the school from closure, but brought it to its present
healthy state. In the high school, they ranged from 10% to 33%; in the colleges they ranged from 10% to 30.74%.

In this light, I have gone on record to state that there is no way that an educational institution like the Ateneo de Naga University can continue to function and develop without yearly tuition increases. In general, this is still true. Every year, salaries of faculty must increase; the rising costs of faculty development must be met. Every year, instructional facilities must be improved. For if the salaries of our faculty cannot allow them to keep up with inflation, and if the university cannot continue to provide them access to first class institutions of learning for their professional development, we shall probably lose them or their effectiveness for our students. If instructional facilities cannot be regularly improved, the university shall continue to fall behind, rather than catch up with, counterpart universities in the region and in the world. Failure to provide
educational standards that are globally respectable can only result in an inferior level of training, education, and preparedness for our graduates. That can only mean greater levels of poverty for our people in the long term.

The tuition of the Ateneo de Naga University must increase steadily. At the same time, the Ateneo is not insensitive to the fact that the country today is undergoing an economic crisis – linked to the global economic recession – that has substantially affected many of our students’ families and their benefactors. Especially our students and their elected representatives have emphasized this. Hence, since the beginning of this current academic year, I have asked our budget coordinators to think the unthinkable – to plan for one exceptional year when tuition would not be raised. As the economic situation has not improved in the course of the year, and as reports of the
hardship that beset many of our students’ families continue to increase, the administrators of the school met over and over again to come up with a budget that would require no tuition increase. With God’s grace, I believe we succeeded. Of course, this has meant difficult belt-tightening throughout the university. It has meant many departments and teachers foregoing plans for improved learning activities or instructional materials. But we decided collectively that out of deference to our students’ parents who have been hit hard by the current economic crisis we would forego these for this coming year.

I wish to thank all those involved in the budget process for their cooperation in this endeavor. We hope that our students and their parents accept our sacrifices as an attempt to be helpful to them in a year of need. With them and the rest of the country, we pray that together we may all contribute to a solution to the economic crisis of the country.

Meanwhile, please be assured that despite the belt-tightening we have accepted in solidarity with our parents, the Ateneo de Naga University will continue to work to further improve its educational output on all levels to its community. In April of this year, the construction of our new one-hundred-million-peso High School complex in Pacol will commence to be ready for opening in SY 2003-04 as a coeducational facility. The migration of the High School to Pacol shall certainly provide a better learning
environment for our high school students. But it shall also leave the Bagumbayan Campus exclusively for the Colleges and Graduate School. With the completion of the 24-classroom Arrupe Hall this coming June, there shall be more than adequate classrooms and learning facilities for our college students. This will enable better scheduling and space allocation to further improve interaction between college students and their formators.

Finally, in the course of the coming year, our new University Church shall be consecrated to our Lord, Christ the King. It shall be a church where all of us shall be invited to thank God for His blessings on the Ateneo de Naga University through our administrators, faculty and staff, students and their parents and benefactors. It shall be a church where we might all be moved to continually dedicate ourselves first to the Kingdom of God – Primum Regnum Dei!