Impacts of Financial Crisis On American Education Industry - Research Paper Example

IMPACTS OF FINANCIAL CRISIS ON AMERICAN EDUCATION INDUSTRY The triggered education cuts in US due to the recent financial crises have an adverse effect on education. The educational cuts in state budget of 2011-13 depict the lack of opportunities being given to the students as compare to few decades before. Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators conducted a survey according to which schools in America are being urged to increase the class size and discard various important programs related to foreign language, art, music, technical education, career training and advanced placement. Wisconsin which was known as the “state of strong tradition of excellent public schools” is subjected to disinvestment by the government. Cuts worth $1.6 billion in state’s biennial budget signify the largest reduction in educational expenditures in the history of America (Winter, 2003). Special education is the most suffered area in terms of educational cuts; more than 100 districts are forced to reduce their special education programs. The financial crisis has worsened the special education by woefully shortening the services special students need. The survey reveals that the class size of four core courses; English, Maths, Science and Social studies is humongous in various districts and almost 40 percent of public school students belong to those districts (Hoxby, 2000). Educational cuts is what we can easily witness and weigh the impact of, however the financial crises is a cycle which is impacting almost all the affairs of the people and education being the most basic need of an individual is suffering. Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center reported that: “Three out of every 10 students in America’s public schools fail to finish high school with a diploma; that amounts to 1.3 million students falling through the cracks of the high school pipeline every year, or more than 7,200 students lost every day. Most non-graduates are members of historically disadvantaged minority groups. Dropouts are also more likely to have attended school in large, urban districts and to come from communities plagued by severe poverty and economic hardship.” The weak economy and the financial crises have triggered the job losses and devaluation of assets making the parents insecure in terms of resources to provide quality education to their children. On the other hand decreased tax revenues and increased demand of services has urged US to tighten its belt. In the midst of risks like rising poverty, mounting inflation, intensifying financial crises and reduced prospects to attain Internationally Agreed Development Goals (IADGs), “students” are the innocent bystanders (Weisbrod, 2008) This recession has made the public schools to suffer dire financial straits with very less educational budgets. Besides this schools have to bear extraordinary lengths in order to combat spiky fall in number of registrations in order to hold the students. In this recession, nearly every state has less to spend on education. A lot of parents request concessions and discounts in fees whereas many schools offer credit to the poor families. Obama described $ 38 billion cuts in domestic spending as “painful but necessary measures”. However The National Education Association (NEA), opposes it as the budget has restrained those educational programs which are critical to the students who are with the greatest needs. Dennis Van Roekel, President NEA said; “Everyone must make hard choices during these tough economic times, but our kids should not bear the brunt of the burden.” According to Anderson (NEA) and Kusler (NEA), the budget deal is a clash between what Congress’s historically supported and what it is doing. Education is the basic necessity for any nation de-strengthening the education sector of a nation is like weakening the roots of the nation. Though the immediate victims are students but in the long run it is the US economy which will suffer. Research shows that economy is directly related to the investments in education; as earnings of educated workers increase with the increase in productivity which is ultimately reflected in increased tax revenues ant local, federal and state level. However; the only way deemed feasible to fight the financial crises in America is to reduce the education budget. Van Roekel said that; “It is shortsighted to use scarce taxpayer dollars to fund an unsuccessful voucher program, while cutting funds for important education services, Medicaid and other programs that deliver essential services that students need. Congress should go back to the drawing board and find a solution that doesn’t harm America’s students. Students should be a top priority, not an afterthought.” Steve Chiovaro, superintendent of Yamhill-Carlton schools is also against the burden of financial crises being transferred on students. He said; “Every year we say: ‘What can we cut? What can we reduce? “We’ve gotten to the point where we can no longer ‘do no harm.’ We’re starting to eviscerate education.” Higher education is not even spared of the pressures of financial crises Public University of California went through the biggest cut in budget in the history of State. Due to these cuts tuition fees is raised in 2012 by 20 percent in addition to the 26 percent increase in last year’s tuition fees which means education is now unaffordable for many. In their book “The Race Between Education and Technology”, two Harvard economists; Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, argued that leadership in educating the masses was the hall mark and the critical factor of America’s success over last centuries. As compare to only 1 percent of British high school graduates 9 percent of Americans graduated from High School in 1950. Hoxby believed that by making education expensive we are eliminating the sense of competition in students. According to him competition plays an important role in polishing the skills of students and makes them way more capable to deal with this dynamic world. However by making education so expensive and accessible to rich only we are not providing the students with an “even keel”. Only those who can afford can buy education and thus are more likely to perform better in the years to come. This unequal distribution of opportunities can lead to future Doctors, Engineers and Entrepreneurs who have not faced and fought the true challenge. The deserving and capable ones might suffer of this which will ultimately end up in the suffering of the entire nation. NAYSAYER VIEW Zuckerman however is an opponent, he has a naysayer view of financial crises and educational cuts on the education sector of America. He believes that it’s not only the financial crises and budget cuts alone which have resulted in poor condition of education industry of America. He is of the view that the education system has various loopholes, form the selection criteria of the teacher to the methodology used is insufficient to raise students who are capable to meet the dynamism of international arena. To give concrete evidence he put forth the research findings; an American 4th grader is ranked at 80th percentile in science internationally who in class 12 turns into a 5th percentile holder. Less than half of high school students acquire an even, internationally accepted basic level in science and math. There exists a huge gap between the teacher requirement and teacher availability for core courses like math, science and computers there by resulting in increased class size. Inadequate incentive plans and remuneration packages made the educational sector less preferable for the potential teachers. None of the teachers are given life time tenure and 99 percent are rated satisfactory even after years of service. Poor appraisal systems and inadequate training opportunities are the root cause of the poor performance of the sector. Zuckerman said: “America has to rethink how to attract, employ, retain, and reward outstanding teaching talent. A century ago, schools could be casual about hiring talent for a simple reason. Educated women had virtually nowhere else to turn for work. In those days, most educated women did not work and those who did disproportionately entered teaching. In the 1950s, when our nation employed a million public school teachers, more than half of college-educated women became teachers. Today, when we have about 3.5 million teaching jobs, roughly only 15 percent of educated women become teachers” (Zuckerman, 2007). Zuckerman put forth the examples from the successful educational systems; th teaching class is selected from among the top 30 graduates in Singapore and Hong Kong, top 10 percent in finland and top 5 percent in South Korea. They further shortlist the candidates on the basis of literacy and numeric levels, motivation and passion to teach and strong interpersonal and communication skills so that the can turn into the best teachers (Zuckerman, 2007). CONCLUSION To sum up it’s not only the financial crisis that has hit hard on the educational sector of America. Merely channelizing the funds in not good enough to establish a system compatible globally but there is a need to optimize the overall machinery of the industry. Within teachers resides the pillars of education and thus best practices should be undertaken to attract, employ, retain and reward them. Besides this the government should understand that shrinking the share of education will have an adverse effect on the future of America. REFERENCES Winter, Greg.“New York State Failing City Schools, Court Says”. New York Times. Web. 2003. Hoxby, Caroline M. “The Effects of Class Size on Student Achievement: New Evidence from Population Variation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. Web. 2000. Zuckerman, Gregory, and Craig Karmin. “Sowood’s Short, Hot Summer.” Wall Street Journal. Web. 2007. Weisbrod, Burton A., Jeffrey P. Ballou, and Evelyn D. Asch. Mission and Money: Understanding the University. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Web. 2008. White, William N. “Large University Endowments Down an Average of 20.5%.” Harvard Crimson. Web. 2010. Wee, Gillian. “University Debt Jumped 54% as Endowments Tumbled in Fiscal 2009.” BusinessWeek, Web. 2010. Read More