Paying to Learn

A traditional Craft information list I'm on again has started up the old thread about charging for training and initiation. We don't do this, and I shot back the reasons why--the Gods choose their own and you must keep their way clear, charging for a service rendered sets up a very different relationship than coven members have with each other, and anyway, what sense does it make to charge for what was freely given to us? Teachers do charge for other kinds of intiation in other places. Different situations, different relationships, different cultural baggage, all beside the point.

Someone contributed a cute story about a high priestess (not a traditional Wiccan one) who charges $180 for her training class, which is refunded if the student is eventually initiated, so that people "won't waste her time."

Aside from the little problem of people going through with an intiation just to get their money back, there is the larger matter of what it is a teacher does. I've been teaching much of my adult life, my day job and my night job. It inevitably involves a great deal of what appears to be wasted time. You are a resource, you set up learning opportunities, and have no way of predicting what, if any, use people will make of them. That's the way of it. This is the basic problem with the idea of merit pay for teachers. As a teacher, you have influence, not control, over what or how much people learn, just as a doctor has influence but ultimately no control over a patient's health--for all the same reasons. But this is another topic, for another post.

But to take a cue from this high priestess who doesn't want her time wasted; how if we were to have all our community college students who say they want to transfer to four-year schools pay triple their current tuition, and then get it back if they succeed? My guess is we could raise the transfer rate a bit and increase the community college budget at the same time.

However, the problem is the same as for the Craft; among the many other things that you cannot predict, you have no way of knowing that the student who is unable or unwilling to pay is not the very one you are looking for.