A service, not a business

By David Bininda

Editor, the Gauntlet,
Re: “Tuition-it’s time for a new strategy,” Nov. 11, 2004,

Bloated bureaucracy? Come to our Department of Biological Sciences and view what we have for bureaucracy. Along the way note the first year labs we have which have “wasted money” on such fine features as rotting walls, leaking ceilings, asbestos floor tiles and lack of new teaching equipment. Oh yes, note the loss of two technicians to set up labs for first year students out of a pool of nine.

Here is a reality check. A university is a service not a business. It is not expected to make a profit but to provide an education so that society as a whole will be better in the future. Trimming the fat has been done over the past three years worth of cuts-add into that the 20 per cent expected over the next four and we are hacking off flesh.’

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