Introduction
Quite possibly you have overheard or participated in a party conversation when someone asks another person: “What do you do for a living?” Then the other person innocently says: “I'm a teacher.” And in response, the other individual replies, “Oh, I'm in business.” This small, yet meaningful comment is designed to suggest that education is somehow not a business. Well, if education isn't a business, what is it? How does education operate and exist without being a business? Let's take a look at a few facts that will help you to understand how education is a business.
Federal Government in Education
First, we all know that businesses must operate by hiring, orienting, training, supervising, and evaluating their workers. Not surprisingly, all educational entities must do the same. Businesses must have mangers to plan, organize staff, coordinate, report, review, and prepare budgets in order to function efficiently and effectively. Again, secondary and post-secondary institutions must do this too in order to reach stated goals and objectives.
Size
The enrollment of American schools and colleges in the fall of 2006 was 72.7 million. The staff in elementary and secondary schools was an astounding 3.6 million. Post-secondary enrollment was 17.5 million in 2005 and staff size was estimated at 1.3 million. Wouldn't you imagine that an industry as enormous as the education industry would need to conduct itself as a business in order to support such gigantic enrollments and personnel? Of course they function exactly like businesses regardless of where their sources of funding originate.
Expenditures in Education
In general, $922 billion was spent during the 2005-2006 school year for public and private education - from kindergarten to graduate school. Nearly a trillion dollars! Does anyone know of a single business that generates this kind of money annually?
Let's now turn our attention to the Federal Government's educational expenditures, while keeping in mind that I am purposely not including the huge amount of money spent at the state and local levels across the United States.
The Federal Government alone spent $93 billion in 2006 in its Department of Education. The remaining federal agencies that provided some form of educational preparation for their workers was $73 billion. In other words, a total of $166 billion was spent for educational purposes by the Federal Government during fiscal year 2006.
The Business of Admissions Consultants
As matter of fact, in order for incoming freshmen to get into the college of their choice - especially to elite colleges and universities - many students must or at least should get advice and guidance from another educational business known as college admission consultants.
This group of elite business educators helps students understand the barriers and convoluted language used before and during the college admissions process. These consultants help students get into the college of their choice rather than settle for a college because he or she couldn't understand the requirements and timing of the admissions process.
As a business teacher helping students overcome barriers to college admissions for over fifteen years, I can assure you that this educational business is “all about business”. The difference between my business offerings and those of other admissions services is that as an admissions consultant, I work with international students as well as American high school students in order to understand and meet the college admissions criteria demanded by elite schools with limited acceptances and demanding criteria.
Conclusion
Given the enormous amount of money, size of staff, and quantity of learners served by education, how can anyone honestly say that education is not a business? Education is not only a business, but it is the most expansive business in the nation. No other business touches the lives of almost everyone at one time or another.
About the Author:
All rights reserved worldwide
Gary Cain at
www.internationaladmissionsconsultants.com is a business teacher and Internet marketer. He is the author of Internet Self Defense the only Internet book of its kind designed to help fight spam, fraud, information theft, and clone web sites.
***Webmasters: You may post this information on your web site, but you must keep this -ownership- box and the information contained herein unchanged.
No. of Times this article has been viewed :
290
Date Published :
Oct 2 2007