A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
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| Volume 6 Number 17 - Tuesday, April 27th, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
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The 2003 Angel Fund Appeal • OCN Website
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The Orthodox Christian News Service |
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The deficit at Holy CrossImagine if someday, somehow, this community had its own Hellenic College in America, something like a Brandeis or a Notre Dame, offering a first-class general education to all interested with a Greek accent. A few of our readers will no doubt respond that we do have a Hellenic college (82 students) and a school of theology, Holy Cross (117 students), in Brookline, Mass. Do we really? Well, the numbers of students attending these schools tell the story. The plain truth is that they are not competitive in terms of education value offered with the rest of the colleges and graduate schools in the region and in the country. That should not be too difficult to understand, should it? And yet schools leaders keep throwing good money after bad by running a deficit of close to $2 million a year, on a budget of $8 million for just about 200 students. Now, after years of running a deficit, they seem to have decided to cut expenses, including staff salaries. The net effect will be to lower the quality of education offered, resulting in even fewer students applying and further increasing the deficit. When it comes to Hellenic College/Holy Cross, it is an issue of proper management, not money. We need a better plan for this important institution. We will not get tired of repeating that the community needs to reexamine its entire policy concerning our institutions. We need to determine what we need and how we can get there in a fiscally responsible manner. This policy should be based on the recommendations of top academic administrators, and it should be carried out by appropriately experienced professionals. Priests or high clergyman have proven time and time again over the course of many years that they are not up to this challenge. Do we need to waste more years and more money to prove what we already know? Yes, we need institutions, especially top-rated schools. Just look at what other ethnic groups achieved. Survival in America depends upon a strong academic presence. We must live up to our great culture and rich academic history and become leaders in education, with colleges that can compete with the very best in the country.
Why is this so
difficult for our leaders to understand?
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