re: SIAP: Mizzou to cut hundreds of positions amid expected 7 percent enrollment drop

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When has Missouri (or really any other state or institution in this country for that matter) ever thrown a bunch of money at education? Our schools in MO are a mess (K-12 and post-secondary) because our state government doesn't care enough about them not to cut funding each year. There is living within your means and there is expecting MU (and again, EVERY K-12 school and public college in Missouri) to do more every year while giving less money.

We're in the midst of one of the better economic booms that our country has ever seen, and somehow in Missouri we don't have enough money to put fuel in our school buses.

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This thread is about the University of Missouri, but this one rubs me the wrong way.

Look how much is the right amount to spend on primary education? How much? How much should you pay in admin costs for a school? How many administrators should be employed?

To my eyes this thing is a damned black box that continually demands more and more money. The results aren't any more impressive than in the past, but they sure have a lot bigger campus and a whole heck of a lot more administrators than they did even 20 years ago.

So is this money wisely spent? Or is it a cottage industry which only educates students as a sideline thing?

Got a budget problem? Explain to me how so many schools can have these ridiculous athletic stadiums.

Then what kind of facilities do you actually need for students to learn?

I'm not going to google it, but I read an anecdote by Robert Heinlein once. It was about his father's education in rural Missouri (Robert Heinlein was born in 1907, so do the math).

"My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2 - year academy roughly analogous to junior college today, except that it was very small - had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.

Here are some of the subjects he studied in backcountry 19th century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.

Twenty - eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. Anyone wishing comprehensive history could take (each a one - year 5 - hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, and American history - and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely with respect to our wars with each."

Come on. I can find other such stories if you wish. And to be fair he did mention his father attended something beyond high school.

I called it a black box. I don't have the right to apply a metric to that box, namely perceived value divided by funds spent, and make a judgement that "you guys suck?"

But I know. The right amount of money to spend is whatever "you" (conflating you with the typical lot who lobby for education funding) say it is. Right?