BaranGASLIGHTING Scholars into Silence

A scholarship meant to save five students from dropping out is being quietly stretched, split short by the barangays tasked to protect it—and nobody in power seems to be losing sleep over it.

Under the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Memorandum Circular No. 2026-038, every barangay in the country was handed a straightforward, fully funded mandate. Each barangay may identify five scholars, and each scholar will receive ₱20,000—cash that is explicitly meant to serve as a finisher fund for vulnerable, at-risk fourth-year students. The guidelines are not vague on this point, neither should it be divided among more than five beneficiaries.

Five names. Twenty thousand pesos each. That was the deal.

But that is not what is happening on the ground. In my own conversations with a scholar-beneficiary, hidden by the name Sara—now a fourth-year student from Eastern Visayas—I learned that though some barangays followed the prescribed number of five, others simply did not.

Some quietly expanded their list to six, even ten recipients, carving that same ₱100,000 pot into smaller and smaller pieces. Twenty thousand becomes ₱12,500. Sometimes it becomes ₱10,000 or less. And the students who are shortchanged? Many of them just nod. They agreed. Because, in their words, “we do not have a choice because the verdict isn’t from ours but from the barangay.” Optionless, they just opened their palms and received the incentives rather than going to school empty-handed.

That silence, though, is not agreement. It is self-preservation. To question the barangay’s arithmetic is to risk being struck off the list entirely, like a lone voice raised in a room where the microphone belongs to someone else. We find ourselves caught between two currents: one is the fear of losing the little that trickles down to them, and the other is the fear of being marked as difficult, ungrateful, or worse, a troublemaker in the eyes of those who hold the purse strings.

So they swallow the arithmetic that shortchanges them, the way one swallows bitter medicine—not because it tastes right, but because refusing it means going without any relief at all.

That resignation is the real scandal here. The memorandum itself says barangays may establish additional eligibility criteria, provided these are properly documented and applied fairly, yet it also gives the barangay’s Committee on Education final say over who qualifies. I am, too, a testimony that many barangays did not announce the incentive; I just knew about the information online. Even an announcement of screening for all qualified grantees has not been well communicated, and all of a sudden, a final list has been revealed.

Then there’s the timeline. This memorandum was announced last July. Tertiary classes started weeks ago. Tuition fees for private school students, internship uniform payments, thesis expenses, transportation—these expenses do not wait for bureaucracy. Yet there are barangays, mine included, that still have not released a single peso of this incentive. Students are already borrowing, already scrambling, while the fund meant to keep them in school sits untouched somewhere in a barangay office.

But strip away the mismanagement for a second—there’s a deeper wound in the design itself. Why does a program built on the premise that everyone has the right to schooling cap itself at five students per barangay? What happens to the sixth student—the one just as at risk of dropping out, just as poor and deserving—who simply had the misfortune of living in a barangay with more than five qualified applicants?

What happens when a barangay hands its slots to families who are already comfortable, while genuinely vulnerable students are pushed aside for someone with the right last name or the right connections? That is not a scholarship anymore. That is patronage wearing a scholarship’s clothes.

On the other hand—since this scholarship program has already been implemented—this led me to question: If there are strict guidelines on choosing grantees for this program, why not have a series of screenings as due process? This would properly select the most qualified candidates for the said program. Because what happens is that if the ₱20,000 is split to cater to more than five grantees, then what could the students actually spend that reduced amount on? At this point, the only strict guideline being followed is how strictly the fund refuses to stretch any further.

Yes, this program, on paper, is a good idea. But in practice? It is being hollowed out by discretion, delay, and quiet political convenience—and the students absorbing the damage are the ones with the least power to complain.

Ask your barangay where your 20 hashes went. Somebody owes every one of these students an answer, and gaslighting scholars into silence isn’t the solution; transparency is.