Government Funding Education? It's Time You Learned The Truth

By: Frank Yunker

Date: 2025-03-25

Worried about funding for Higher Education now that Trump is dismantling the Department of Education? Relax. A lot has changed over the years.

Truth be told, I was hired back in 1989 at a local community college under a grant from the Federal government. Many of the college programs were adding a required computer course, so they justified hiring an additional computer faculty position in anticipation of increased demand.

Sure enough, my classes were full and I was even teaching an overload course. So, I asked the Dean why they didn't move my position to the regular budget since clearly the position was needed.

"Why do that when the Federal government is giving us free money for the next 3 years?" was the Dean's counter argument. The Federal money was for new initiatives and every new initiative was eventually funded through the college budget. They only proposed good ideas and good ideas would prove successful and then be added to the college budget.

Flash forward 30 years. Federal money was the kiss-of-death. Programs and positions that had existed for years were suddenly funded through the Federal grant as a last stop before cutting the position altogether. Learning Center coordinator. Bye-bye. Communications program. Sayonara. Admissions. Curriculum developer. Adios. You get the picture. Federal funding was the easiest way to tell someone their services were no longer important enough to put in the regular budget.

It was not just funding for salaries. The college secured a $600,000 grant from elected officials to create a nanotechnology program. That was the purpose according to the April 2007 news article that announced the initiative. By the time the money was approved in 2009, there was talk of programs in Alternative Energy and Advanced Manufacturing, but the only concrete idea was a "mock clean room."

By 2010 the clean room was complete. There was a lot of hyped up press. A year later, a community college down river called. They were considering a clean room and asked about which courses and syllabi included components of the clean room technology. The President asked the Provost who asked the Dean who asked the Professor to provide some details. The Professor replied that most of the changes had not filtered into the course documents and that wouldn't happen for a year or two.

In 2013 the US Senator who funded the grant came by for a visit and inspection. I passed the entourage and went into class. A student announced the clean room was a waste of money and she had never seen anyone in it.

After the class, another student told me about his clean room experience. They had a tour of it and he had been shown how to "suit up." That was it.

As for the US Senator, she thought she saw a student in the clean room doing something useful. It was actually a college employee all suited up pretending to be a student pretending to do something useful. I say "pretending" because the $80,000 electron microscope had broken the previous year and there was no service contract to have it fixed.

So, the $600,000 grant would be best filed under "marketing" rather than "educational resources." And at that, it was a waste of money.