Where are the principles of the schools?

The last pullout by UNSW certainly shows something. It shows how universities are no longer that concerned about students. Sure, they are concerned about students' grades, but only because the grades indirectly affect their ratings and hence their abilities to attract more students. The worst is that universities become concerned by money concerns.

Once, a long time ago, teaching was without monetary rewards. The only reward you will get is perhaps the ability to brag about your disciple's marvellous talents, groomed specially by you. That explains why there were so little teachers, for there are only few who were willing to take up such a noble job. It is the classic market failure. A socially beneficial good is underconsumed, and underproduced. Because the marginal benefit is way too low to both sides, and the marginal cost way too high. Its the same with many knowledge-based subjects, like scientists, mathematicians, inventors. Or even historians, literature writers, etc. To teach was a way to pass on what little knowledge the master knew. More often, it was guidance on how to learn. For it ultimately paved way to more knowledge.

Yet, recently with the new age of capitalism, any thing that can be "monetarize" is taken advantaged of immediately, a term that is now labelled "entrepreneurship". As such, being professors and teachers can be quite a lucrative enterprise now. Instead of teaching how to learn, schools teach bits and pieces of facts, without showing how the facts came about, how possibly can more of such facts be produced. New ways are devised on how best to force students to remember millions of facts forcibly, so that they can ace the run-of-the-mill exams, and so that the school can proudly parade the fact they had 100% passes.

It is most sad to see that the decision to pull out a school is based on "whether the school is making money." It is perhaps even sadder to know that there are many schools that are like that. They should really revise their school motto to: Aurum potestas est.