Education Education Education - Part 2 School

"書中自有黃金屋,書中自有顏如玉" - "within Books you will find gold plated house, within books you will find precious jade", my grand-mum always told me these 2 phases when I was young. As long as I study hard, a world of opportunities are waiting for me to explore.

Education is definitely one of the way to get one out of poverty but in reality the cost of education are huge. The so call "free education" is actually not that free at all. Books, uniform, transports all cost money and not to mention school trip, school assignment, after classroom activities. (I will mentioned school trip and school assignment later.)The irony is you need money for education and if you don't have money in the first place you will not get the opportunity to be educated to get out of poverty.

Couple of months ago, I was having the above conversation with one of my cousin when I was in Hong Kong. She worked in the government, in one of those department that address everyday people concern on a daily basis. She gave me an example on that some of the school assignment involve going to museums for research. Not all museums in Hong Kong are free. Getting to the museum by public transport is not free either. An MTR trip (Hong Kong underground) vary from a few dollars to thirty something dollars (for some trip like Lok Ma Chau to Cental). In Hong Kong the minim wages is around 20 Hong Kong dollar per hour (aprox 2EURO). The cost is significant for low income household. How about the digital camera you need to take photos of the assignment which cost around HKD1000 for a low end entry? Is that mean a low income family need to stave for a week to get the assignment done? For some courses you even need to create a portfolio,how can you create a portfolio without money.

Recently I am working out how much I need to fund my daughter through to university. she is 2 yrs old now. I need to have a hard look at my finance.

Education Education Education - Part 3 University

The Third encounter I have is related to University. Every year near the end of the year, I always get a phone call from my old universities asking for money. What they do is that they get a bunch of volenteer students and they start cold calling alumni and hopefully a phone call will yield some kind of return with a donation. The amount of money going to High Education is huge in the UK but still lacking behind other countries like US.

Universities have to find some way to raise the necessary fund. For the established Universities in UK like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Imperial etc... they charge a large amount for Overseas student fees but they still have to carryout some fund rising events like cold calling.

Only some months ago, the director of LSE Sir Howard Davies resigned. LSE came under pressure to explain itself the links between LSE funding and Libya Dictator Gadarfi .A recent enquiry also highlighted that a judgmenet of error was made by the sir Howard. The lack of govenance was also to blame. The truth is that it is difficult for the cash straped University simply ignored a large some of donation eventhough the source of the donation may be called into question.