I don’t care if colleges run for a profit, nor do I care what they do with said profit. What I have a problem with is making a profit, while receiving taxpayer money, while being an educational institution.
Again, why?
This is incongruent with your previous post, which I’ve quoted below.
It doesn’t seem like you actually know why you don’t like schools having a ‘profit’.
Serious question, do you know what a profit is? Like, how that occurs?
This was in response to your question of where do the profits go.
and this question? @pfury
Yes, I know how profits occur
Edit: I also know what profits ARE (to make sure I fully answer a rhetorical question)
[quote=“pfury, post:145, topic:226179”]I’d remove any and all government financial support (tax breaks, incentives, direct funding, etc) to any educational institution that operates with/for a profit.
Because I see “education” as a service for the betterment of society/theplanet/etc and if you’re going to treat a school like a business, you shouldn’t get the best of both worlds (profit AND taxpayer money).
Usually the profits are rolled into stupidly high pay for high level administration, rolled into an investment account to toss into the stock market, buying surrounding real estate to stop people from building/utilizing the space near them, scientific research (usually for the purpose of making money), etc.
I don’t fundamentally have a problem with for profit education, just for profit education while getting tax payer money.
I would apply this to all educational institutions.
I don’t care if colleges run for a profit, nor do I care what they do with said profit. What I have a problem with is making a profit, while receiving taxpayer money, while being an educational institution."
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A profit is when revenue exceeds expenses. Schools receive their funding amount and then create a budget that later is approved by the school board. (the board is a group of elected officials) At the end of the year, if there is any additional funds, my experience is that the funds roll over into the next year, OR they spend that money on critical facility upgrades.
Again, what is wrong with a school having a profit at the end of the year? Would you feel better if they ran a deficit? You literally haven’t provided one reason why an educational institution should have a positive income statement. You seem to think profits are bonuses for district admin.
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Absolutely nothing. If schools want to have a profit, they should have at it.
Are you drawing a distinction between for profit schools like DeVry, and private not-for-profit schools like Yale and Harvard?
For-profit schools might call their money a profit, while the private not-for-profit schools, which typically generate a profit each year, call it a surplus. So, you have these not-for-profit universities like Harvard and Yale who have huge endowments from donations and investment income. Would you allow them to apply for NIH grants?
Are you saying that the for-profits should be treated differently for tax and regulatory purposes? Not be eligible for grants? Student aid? I can’t recall the detail of the huge crack down on some of the private schools like DeVry but I believe it was about them overstating incomes and employment figures to prospective students, right?
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So, if a school district has a surplus of money. Let’s say $10k; they should lose all their funding?
Pretty sure this is correct, although not 100%. Another good example would be ITT Tech.
The basis of my thought is that profits/surplus COULD have been passed to students via reduced tuition. I believe education is a public service for the betterment of the society/planet/etc. I also believe access to education should be considered a “right” in a 1st world country such as this.
I also know many K-12 public school teachers in the very low income area near where I live. K-12 schools receive enormous tax incentives, funding, etc because it’s the only way they can’t sustain themselves. They’re forced to do as much as humanly possible to stretch every dollar they have as far as it can go.
A school district can’t have a profit because they don’t have revenues, so they would obviously be immune to this change.
Yes, they can. Government funding is called ‘revenue’ by every school district Business Manager I have met.
Which revenue source is bad, assuming the institution has a profit?
Since you covered the good ones- I’d put boys with male teachers and girls with female teachers.
We have different gender specific communication patterns and I think that crossing them over from one to the other creates a lot of interference in communication.
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We saw Fed policy that discouraged private lending in the student loan market, right?
Wasn’t this one of the Occupy Wall Street things? They wanted to take profit out of education, or bring it all under the government control?
“We knew we wanted to focus on issues around for-profit education and looking at education as a commodity…”
“We believe people should not go into debt for basic necessities like education…”
There was an Opt Out group that allied itself with the Occupy WS movement.
Among the demands was this kind of thing. We demand an end to:
*Corporate run for-profit charter schools that divert public funds away from public schools
*Corporate interventions in public education and education policy
*The use of public education funds to enact school “choice” measures influenced and supported by the corporate agenda
It was kind of an anti private, anti school choice manifesto.
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Fair point, that’s not how I think of it, but I’ve never had to do it.
I’m open to editing my original thought on this premise. Beyond a margin of error (I don’t have anywhere near the data to come up with an accurate number), I would remove all forms of govt assistance to educational services that have a profit margin above a predetermined threshold.
How about they have to return their surplus back to the government.
Edit: or a percentage back
I’d be alright with that if there was a way to ensure it’s unable to be abused, or at the very least, a review process to slap schools that are clearly abusing it.
Huh… That’s interesting. I can see it for some things. We had an all female staff at the Young Mother’s High School, which seemed appropriate. BUT I’m not sure I can agree, because I want my daughter to keep her current Tech and Social Studies teachers, both men and just phenomenal. And two of my most memorable high school teachers were men.
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Odd fact- One of the heads of the Occupy movement was a graduate of Mercersburg Academy.
A friend of mine was an alumni and recognized him on the news.
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Do we have anywhere near a good enough ratio of M/F teachers to pull this off? I ask not to judge, but because I don’t know nearly enough about teacher demographics to answer this myself.
Well like I said, you took all of the good ones!
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