As a moonlighting college educator teaching investigative reporting and a little bit of history, it always pained me whenever students would go missing during examination days because they were unable to settle their tuition.

This situation is nothing new, and I distinctly remember that even in the 1980s, my professors at the University of Santo Tomas would ask us to show our examination permits first to prove that payments due to the school had been made.

Universities and colleges, whether private or public, have to survive, and so they have, for the longest time, implemented the “no permit, no exam” policy. Coming off the pandemic, notwithstanding government subsidies to schools and students, many learning institutions are barely afloat.

As the sole breadwinner during that period when my three sisters, Melanie, Sheila, Patricia, and I were having our tertiary education, my good (and pretty, if I may say) mother Angelina took out all kinds of loans (GSIS, Pag-Ibig, RPSTA, etc.) to make sure school fees were promptly paid.

I’m amazed to this day at how she carried us through on an elementary public school teacher’s salary so that my sisters and I only had to worry about the academics and passing the exams, and the courses.

I tried bussing tables in a Chinese resto along Quezon Avenue, but I was deemed too frail—skin and bones, really—to risk dropping the China and reducing them to bits and pieces to be swept off the floor.

I also got scammed trying to be a working student, answering a Manila Bulletin classified ad posted by those without conscience who preyed on job hopefuls, those who need money the most, in that ghetto Mercedes Building across the Quiapo Church.

Oh well, a sucker is born every minute, but lessons had been learned the hard way. So, the preceding should explain why I have a soft spot for working students. Still, whatever little concession I can give them does not mean they do not have to sweat it out to burn the midnight oil, so to speak, not just to pass but to learn to become professionals.

The educational yardstick, at least as far as I am concerned, does not flex and is as rigid as it needs to be, to produce students productive and disciplined citizens. More than the dull students, those who flunk are the slackers who are too lazy to merit anything but a 5.

Back in my college days, we’d hear of those other “working students” who charmed their way to earning “scholarships” from that subset of predators who set up “foundations” and “trust funds” for their stable of pretty young things.

Nothing has really changed. When there’s a need to be filled, there are kind-hearted people who help without any quid pro quo, but then there are those, the Mang Kanors of the world, who “help” to take advantage.

This week, President Bongbong Marcos Jr. signed Republic Act 11984, mandating that all public and private schools allow “disadvantaged students” to take their periodic and final examinations without the required permits and despite failing to settle tuition and other school fees.

The title of RA 11984, the “No Permit, No Exam Prohibition Act,” says it all: It covers K to 12, technical-vocational, and higher education institutions. But the finer print in the law may say something else.

To avail of the law’s protection, students would be required to register themselves with the Department of Social Welfare and Development as “disadvantaged” learners, defined as those who experienced calamities, emergencies, force majeure, or other “good and justifiable reasons” under the rules and regulations to be set by the DSWD.

A report, however, said that “schools would be authorized to require the submission of a promissory note, withhold records and the credentials of students, and exercise other legal and administrative remedies for the collection of fees.”

RA 11984 seems well-intentioned, but experience tells us that many laws have been rendered useless by the very rules and regulations crafted for them. Likewise, implementing challenges often rear their heads, and so we’ll see, we’ll defer judgment until the actual application of what could be a landmark piece of legislation.

For scheming students, don’t splurge on hard-earned tuition money from your parents and take succor under this law, okay? Just remember that you’d be parents too soon enough, and you would not want your kids doing that to you, right?