Our Ailing Infrastructure

My father and mother lived in a homeowners association once the chicks had left the nest.  One of the interesting things about homeowners association living is that while they are non-profit, associations they set up a "reserves account" to cover those non-annual costs.  Things like resealing the parking lot or replacing roofing.  The carried over reserve funds are not considered profit.  They are a sensible mode of covering costs that are not regular annual costs.  The association adds a basic level of funding to build the account each month.

What does this have to do with chemistry?  Repair or replacement of instruments has become an impossibility given the lean years we have faced and see into the future.  Immediate needs get covered in lean times and infrastructure can go to hell in the mean time.  Just look at the nations bridges.

Our institutions generally don't have anything resembling a reserve account for our infrastructure.  My department has not had a state funded operating account in years, so adding money to an infrastructure reserve is out of the quesiton.

Looking for another option, I have brought this issue up in our development committee only to meet with the response that donations for repair and replacement of infrastructure is not something people will donate to.  Scholarships, yes, instrumentation, no.  Is this a problem of not making a strong enough case?  Without the resources to train the students with modern functioning equipment, scholarships only support training graduate for jobs in the last century.  Hardly a value added degree.

And what of our institutions and our statehouses.  If we are supposed to be training the high tech employees of the future, how are we supposed to do it without of date and nonfunctioning equipment.  Yes, it will mean that the increase in costs of education will outstrip the rate of inflation.  But should we expect that the up-to-date technology will cost nothing.  This is how we get into an infrastructure hole that you can't get out of.

T.S.Hall