Well, I was thinking of an interesting post, then I decided that this email I got from me school would provide something far, far more fascinating: broke ass education!
The letter goes like this:
As you well know, recent unanticipated decreases in state funding have presented East Tennessee State University with significant financial challenges during the current 2008-09 fiscal year. ETSU began the year on July 1, 2008, with a 5.8 percent ($3.6 million) reduction for the academic campus and a 2 percent funding decrease for both the James H. Quillen College of Medicine ($581,000) and Family Medicine ($114,000). In October, there was an additional one time reduction of 3.4 percent ($3.2 million) that affected all three units. For FY 2008-09, this has resulted in a $7.6 million budget reversion for the university. The potential for further reductions exists that, by July 1, 2009, could be as high as 19.5 percent depending on state financial condition and the effect, if any, of a Federal stimulus package.
In October 2008, President Stanton appointed a Task Force that was charged with developing a comprehensive plan that would address these anticipated budgetary reductions by identifying immediate and short-term strategies as well as long-term plans that would help guide ETSU into the 2009-10 fiscal year and beyond, as further reductions may occur.
Tee-hee, I like the term Task Force :D task force...
Anyway. ETSU is hardly the first school in the nation, let alone the state to get hit with budget reduction, but this shit is getting uuuuggly. You do have to factor in, of course, that next year we're going to have to pay-per-class and the fact that tuition, room & board and all the gym exercise and beer you could ever want factors into about %6000 a semester. But educational budget cuts always depress the life out of me, just a little.
Ugh. Whenever I see these cuts for my state and other states I just wonder how much decent education is a priority in this country. It feels like a joke a lot of times--schools are underfunded, teachers don't get paid nearly as much as they should, test scores, and just all this garbage. It's ridiculous and it gets more ridiculous every year. We want our kids to be smart so we force so much shit in their heads at younger ages to the point where they'll be job training in pre-school and it seems we're so concerned with test scores and raising bars that we're forgetting...what exactly are the kids learning?
And then these huge ass budget cuts. TN has gone through quite a bit with the education budget, it's almost mind boggling. And so sad...humbug ~_~
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Please share some knowledge. Or amuse me at least :O