Education: Money Makes the System Work

Education, one of the major social services, has long been the most institutionalized benefit made available in society, a foundation we build on.

Money, or rather, how much a government or individual has, determines who will continue, and who will go on to a higher education. In North America’s case, a student must either come up with cash for college or university, hopefully get a grant or two, or borrow from a benevolent government and create an unwanted future debt. And of course, the quality of education depends on how much these institutions get from government.

The days of professors and instructors covering themselves with the glory of teaching are a distant memory, nothing more than a romantic notion. Young men and women starting out as teachers still find this glory invigorating when they first step up to the line. However, sophisticates and the middle aged in the profession, alert to the economic restraints from within, have a deep doubt about their future, as well as the institutionalized benefit : education itself.

The progressive dismantling of funding from governments weakens the already weak: universities and colleges.

There is a complicated urgency, a growing impulse at universities and colleges to go it alone. Programs have been kicked into high gear to make up for monies lost from lack of funding. Living wills with alumni designating their Alma mater beneficiary are not uncommon. Aside from homecoming week, fund raising takes on a major role for all alumni associations. In an odd, but seemingly appropriate way, perhaps in the tradition of North American free enterprise, schools everywhere are going outside the system to raise money.

Perhaps the first priority of colleges and universities should be elimination of waste, and a realization that the heyday years of unlimited funding and open pockets of government are a thing of the past. The years when frugality nearly went bankrupt are over. “Waste not want not” has, in the past, been kept out of education. Frugality was a forbidden fruit to be kept away from institutions of higher learning, bad news for students, staff and faculty alike.

The good news is, that now, thanks to the bad news, “waste not, want not” is much more than a cliched saying from another era. The irresistible force of necessity has reawakened it in all educational institutions. Holding a bake sale just won’t do it anymore.