Hello again everyone! After a week away for another project, I’m back with more blogging about my experiences in the class that I truly am starting to fall in love with!! I can’t explain why it really has become my favorite class this term, maybe even my entire college experience so far but I really just love going to every class and learning something new and learning things that are so relevant to today’s society and learning things that I can easily see happening all around me. The nonprofit sector is everywhere and this class is showing me that each and every class.
The topic we focused on in class and readings this week was education. Now I know I say this every time, but especially with this area of the sector, I was completely shocked to learn that private schools, K-12 and college/universities are all about of the nonprofit sector! When I think education, the last thing I think is nonprofit. I always just assumed all schools/institutions were just their own separate entity that got money from the government to run and stay active. It honestly never occurred to me, even though I knew you had to pay to go to private K-12 schools and pay more to go to a private college or university that, that made it a nonprofit, but now it all makes sense.
Now let’s discuss the lecture a little bit. Some interesting things that I found/learned during the lecture were that only 20% of American students attend private college or universities, considering there are 1,700 institutions. For some reason that percentage seems so low seeing how many institutions there are, but then as I am thinking most private colleges or universities have low enrollments/populations so that number seems about right. Just from my experiences I perceive there to be more private college and universities and so I expected the percentage and number of institutions to be higher. It was also interesting to learn why private institutions are so much more expensive then public and the main reason I found was, decline of government aid. This is just something that I never had thought about before but it makes complete sense now. The public institutions have to get their money from somewhere and if the government is not helping then costs have to rise and donors have to prevalent. I’m honestly kind of surprised that private institutions have been able to survive without government funding and how willing some people are to pay for a private school rather than a public, because the assumption seems to be you will get a better education. It was also surprising to learn that salaries in private schools are typically pretty low. You would think that because of the high costs of the school salaries would be pretty high and institutions would want the best of the best in terms of instructors and they would pay them more to stay with the school.
Onto to the reading now, it was pretty straight forward, but some things really stuck out to me. First, it was interesting to learn how the education and religious nonprofit sectors interact. Learning that religious education was the primary focus of private institutions with Catholic being the largest provider of private education (110) was not all too appealing to me. I do not want to get all political on here, but I am so against church/religion having any part of education what so ever, that to hear that religion is such a large part of the private education nonprofit sector is something that just irks me the wrong way. I don’t want to rant but I just completely disagree with the whole thing. On the other hand I was surprised to learn that private schools are found heavily in urban areas (111). Maybe it is just were I’m from, but I always assumed that urban schools were public and private schools you only found in some limited urban areas but mostly in suburbs. This is interesting considering the fact that private schools are so expensive and it can be assumed that urban areas are not as affluent as suburban areas so this seems that would be a problem to me. Finally, before reading I had no idea what a “charter school” was, even though I had heard the term multiple times but it was nice to finally find out what they were. It was interesting though however to learn that charter schools are more focused on student performance rather than regulation of teachers and other things a public or private school would be focused on. They want results, which I think is weird because don’t all schools want results? I just found that interesting. I would love to research charter schools a little more and find out more about them and why they do what they do.
This class continues to amaze and confuse me but I love it! I can’t wait for Monday to be amazed and confused even more. Until next week……
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I'm super stoked that you're super stoked on the class. That's great to hear. Sometimes it feels like the topic is so broad that we're bouncing all over the place, and I'm glad that it's resonating well with you. In terms of your reservations about the role of religion in education, I might direct you toward Emma's blog post for last week (http://evallandigham.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/education-envy/). Her reaction is largely in response to the opinions you've expressed here. She shares about her experience at a Catholic school, and debunks some of the myths that "that religion is shoved down the throats of students" (her words).
ReplyDeleteThere's A TON of information out there about charter schools if you're interested in learning more (and what you'll find is a very divided opinion on their existence). Keep up the good work! (5/)