Posted by The REAL reason on January 30, 2002 at 11:52:49:
In Reply to: orchestra players in marching band posted by Tom on January 29, 2002 at 14:53:54:
Federal funding for education is administered by respective states, and then funneled through their state's respective counties before reaching the schools and their individual departments. The dough from the feds is based on enrollments, literally the headcount in each and every for-credit class! Three enrollment-units for a student gets three times the money of one enrollment-unit, you get the idea. Some of you may recognize terms like "census day" or "enrollment day" - where a school literally goes through the motions of a physical head count. If students are forced to enroll in classes ancillary to their interests, it gets the department more money as a whole...machiavelli might think this practice "ok" if the ancillary interests got the extra dough for the forced enrollee's - but whens the last time you saw equivalent department dollars being spent for, say...the orchestra-versus-the field performers?