The Market Price of Education

Should education be a business or is it in the public interest to have it fully funded by taxes paid by the public? Should it be users pay or available to all those who seek a higher education? Are the wealthy the smarter class and those favoured for higher education? Should wealthy foreign students be favoured over local poorer students? Should the public fund universities? What is fair? How does one decide? What do we think? Are we thinking of humanity or profit? All good questions which shape the future. The purpose of education is to evoke higher questions.

MAKE THE IRON HOT BY STRIKING

Do you strike while the iron is hot?
Or make the iron hot by striking?
Do you react to market conditions and allow a free fall?
Or do you create infinite possibilities and listen to the inner call?
Which is the higher knowledge?

Is the public university system for the public?
Or is it determined by foreign interests?
Which shapes the future for Australia?
For intent determines the outcome,
The outcome determines the source of income.

What is intelligence?
Is it academic?
Or intelligencia?
Is it to see a financial picture as the final divid-end?
Or the big picture of social change that blends rather than divides in the end?
One looks at the bottom line,
The other draws new lines in the sands of change.

For we have entered an era of unintended consequences,
Where the game is changing,
The rhetoric is no longer believed,
People fear for the future of their children,
They ask – an economic collapse founded on greed as the seed of crisis?
Or an ecological collapse where business-as-usual is unable to see the pink elephant of its own making?

For the earth is surely shaking,
The ice caps are exponentially melting,
And this is not normal climatic conditions,
It is sending clear signs of arrhythmia,
That economic growth cannot be sustained,
Schools of thought must change direction and open to diversity,
Exploring pathways never considered,
Perhaps this ushers in an Open University,
For the university could be the game changer with enlightened circuit breakers,
Recognising doing good is good for business,
For it is time to screw business-as-usual,

Could universities lead in another way?

These are the moral dilemmas that are denied,
Truth holds sacred seals to civilisation’s survival,
Fear and control are old role models shutting down real debates of revival in Agora’s of free thinking,
As the real free fall is free for all,
Facing risk with moral fortitude rather than running from dissent is the key,
Nourishing the seeds of sustainable futures does not harvest the forest for the trees,
We no longer see our true nature in communities of collaboration seeking a win/win,
Others fight to be right to infer ‘you are either with us or against us’ to become the biggest loser,
This is not the democratic notion that carries you on an ocean of infinite possibility,
Yet there is power in numbers seeking equality, social values and contrasting thoughts,
For it is in contrast not conformity that we catalyse new ideas to be bold,
Expanding the leading edge of universities that will change the world,
Incubating discourse, dissent and enlightenment – mixing it up,
For there are no enemies only diversities that no-one can change only challenge,
And this sets the real stage for the possibility to be infinite.

Plato and Socrates espoused a Socratic dialogue of questioning in Agora’s of great diversity,
Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gandhi preached the unity of the commons,
For this was the prime mover for comm-unity,
So why not consider to know thyself and be true,
Why not consider to be the change you wish to see rather than victims of circumstance?
Can you look in the mirror and see true beauty?
For what you see in your world is a reflection of your own truth,
It is never the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
To embrace the possibility of being wrong is the beginning of wisdom,
The Agora of open debate unmasks the mirror,
Perhaps this is the truth that sets all free,
To be or not to be is the real question,
A university of higher choice or a silent voice? Pricing Australian students out of the market!