[Vision2020] MSD Pay and Tenure--a reply

[Dale Courtney]

Donovan wrote:
> You keep on with the statistics all you want, but you provide no answers
of
> cutting the budget without cutting opportunities for children.

Hmmm. The number of kids at MSD is down 21.3% in the last 10 years.

*If* the cost driver of education were the children, then it's senseless
that inflation-adjusted spending has *increased* by over 100% in that same
time.

> I would be
> all for "maximizing the dollars we spend" on education.

How odd. Instate tuition at UI is $3,000 per year; out of State tuition at
UI is $10,000 per year; and MSD's "tuition" in FY01 was $8,772 and is
projected to have been $10,112 in FY03. That means that it is cheaper to
give someone a B.A. than it is to put them from 9th to 12th grade.

> But you have not
> given one iota of evidence that this is possible.

How is that possible? You've *got* to be kidding!  Non-parochial private
schools all across the country do it every day. You can get a top of the
line education for under $3k/year. And homeschoolers across the country are
doing it on a daily basis.

You should rather be asking the question -- *why* are government schools so
expensive.

I'll give you a hint for where to start -- they are run by the government
and have no incentive to run better because they are a government-sponsored
monopoly.

But more on this later.

Best,
Dale