Good News on the Education Front

Here is some good news on the education front. The Dow Chemical Company has two programs for investing in education. The first is a grant program to MIT to foster a developing interest in science by women and minorities. The second is a program with Texas A&M to support graduate student research through grants.

The significance of this is that private industry takes an interest in supporting education. It is not altruistic, nor should it be. Dow is one among many companies in the business of making a profit through the supply of chemicals. In order to sustain its operation for the benefit of the stockholders, management, lower level employees, and its customers, Dow needs to continually replace employees who retire. In order to have a properly qualified pool from which to draw new, competent employees, it must ensure that that the pool is large enough, with members who are intellectually blessed and have had the advantage of a good chemical education in preparation for new responsibilities in industry.

Industry grants to graduate students help the students maintain living conditions, as they continue their education. A grant is usually tied to a research project or theme in which the sponsor is interested. The research results may be usable in part by the sponsoring company, In addition, this type of apprenticeship gives the company information on the prospects of the student as a potential employee.

Conversely, the US government has different motivations for sponsoring education at the expense of the tax payer. It promotes general education as a benefit to the serfs from the great white (now black) father. Any such distribution of funds, of either direct or indirect benefit to citizens, is a vote getter to retain power. Those recipients do not connect with the fact that the distributions are from their own pockets as taxes.

Like industry, government grants are tied to a program of the sponsor. The program of the industrial sponsor is to gain information from the research and help judge the candidacy of the grant receiver as a potential employee. The insidious part of the government sponsoring agency is to gain information, which can be used to support far-out government ideology and influence the public. The doling out of money also satisfies the ego and yet increases the power lust of administrative officials.

Private industry has properly husbanded its resources and can afford to support its legitimate cost of developing education to further its business of supplying goods and services to the people.. The federal government, on the other hand, is broke and has no legitimate reason for continuing its grant program.. The taxpaying public must find ways to eliminate these obscene expenses for "pie in the sky" operations at taxpayer expense. One obvious way is to throw out the present administration and its congressional supporters in the next