WHILE IN graduate school in New York, I often reflected on how poorly institutions whose purpose it was to teach one how to conduct business, in fact, managed their own. My pet peeve was the long queue at the elevators. The office building converted into a university was woefully inadequate to accommodate the number of students in attendance. And what, I wondered, would happen in case of a fire?

The University of Technology (UTech) seems to have decided to prevent students from taking the exams that come at the end of the tuition. So, UTech has already delivered the product and, as such, will only worsen its chances of getting paid if students have to drop out of school. Students who cannot continue will leave UTech with mid-year vacancies that they might not be able to fill.

Extend credit period

If the student returns with the money at a later date, he/she would then be occupying a space that could have been sold to another student. There is, of course, the bad public relations aspect.

UTech might try doing what any half-inch businessman would have done and that would be to extend the period of credit. A student with an education stands a better chance of repaying than an embittered one who had to leave school.

Of course, the entire matter seems to smack of crassness. It is unseemly for an educational institution to throw students out of class. The only thing worse must be a doctor who walks away from a penniless, pregnant woman in labour.

I am, etc.,

DOREEN MCGANN

doreenmcgann@aim.com