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Whythawk on TwitterHow much does a free education cost?
Written by Gavin Chait
Even given the spurious claim that leadership is something that can be painted on, the academy is an expensive way to achieve its objectives. The most expensive private schools in the country charge around $ 6 900 per year for tuition and produce internationally sought-after graduates. The majority charge only $ 1 150 per year. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy charges $ 7 500 a year – the entire fee paid for by Oprah Winfrey’s Foundation.
This is not to single out Oprah Winfrey. There are many schools operating in this way in South Africa. The CIDA City Campus in Johannesburg offers a "free" business degree to its students. It is difficult to assess how much tuition costs when so much is donated (including their entire $ 14 million building, and all the teaching) but you can sponsor one of their 2 000 learners for $ 1 150 a year. The total cost runs into significantly more than this.
Michael Strong, of FLOW, writes that Walmart has, by the simple expedient of purchasing $ 23 billion of goods a year from China, assisted 460 000 Chinese a year out of poverty through jobs created in factories dedicated to supplying Walmart.
He cites the following: “Ashoka, the highly regarded social entrepreneurship organisation certified as among the "Best in America" charities, highlights among its hundreds of projects a worker's cooperative in Brazil that is growing rapidly: each member contracts individually with Coopa-Roca, but the collective meets weekly. Membership in the cooperative grew from eight members in 1982 to 16 in 2000, and has surged to 70 steady members today.”
Strong concludes by asking, “Is it heroic to raise one person up out of poverty each month, but merely a statistic to raise up a million?”
The rush to set up specialised teaching facilities in developing countries seems more about personal visions and dreams than about the real requirements of development. Leadership is not something that can be taught. It is not a technical skill. It is something that is earned through fire and experience.
Education is not an outcome, it is a process. The most important skill learned through education is an ability to learn. South Africa has adequate private schools and universities.
Walmart did not create all those jobs by providing a requirement for high-level technical skills at one business, but for thousands of suppliers at thousands of different low-level businesses.
It is much cheaper to send a child to an existing school or university than it is to build and staff a new one. There is also the terrible attraction that the founders have of meddling in their students’ education and attempting to fill their heads with all the hopes and aspirations they have for that society rather than allowing the child to find their own interests and dreams.
In CIDA's case the dream of the founders was to create a society based on transcendental meditation. Two years ago the students rose up in rebellion against the imposition on their time and the pseudo-religious overtones it was taking on. One of the major sponsors, KPMG, became so concerned about what was happening that they withdrew their sponsorship. That was the year that the first crop of students were due to graduate. None did. The conflict died down but suspicions still linger.
In the case of charitable educational institutions the focus becomes more about the charity rather than the education. Let's admit it, it costs money to get a good education and we should not be embarrassed to admit it. If both CIDA and Oprah’s Leadership Academy were really about the needs of the children rather than about the marketing and idealism of their founders then they would be low-profile low-cost bursary schemes in which the students got to choose their own direction and their own beliefs.
The ability to make free choices about what to learn and where will teach far more than the imposition of a faux-free education filled with pseudo dreams.
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