Mo Money Mo Problems

One really frustrating thing about staying involved in academia is the amount of manipulation and competition that sway true learning. It's pretty obvious that money plays a big role in how a scholastic institution is run. If your middle school was in a struggling school district, you hardly learned anything in class because your classes were too big, there weren't enough books to go around, and the school administration didn't have enough resources to organize a sane school day. In college, funding becomes a big deal, especially for a private school (which I attend), and every aspect of its education and operation tend to lean towards what the investors want, or what the administrators think the investors want.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing; I think it's good and honest that an organization with people putting money into it tries to listen to those people keeping that organization afloat. It only gets tricky when things like genuine curiosity in a subject or a thirst for learning becomes hindered by the monetary and logistical concerns of the educational institution. This can be also interpreted as specialization in a field by each school being a strength in the American school system. It's still hard as a student to cope with the realization that your school would rather listen to an old guy that may not even live in St. Louis to make decisions about what affects you every single day.
Another interesting facet of academia is the research industry. It's a crazy mix of pure curiosity, big-money greed, and philanthropy. A lot of researchers research things they don't really care about or for in order to make a living; a lot of researchers go into a field of research to try to solve a problem. Apparently a surprising number of cancer researchers had cancer as children and was inspired by their recovery aided by cancer research and treatment. Even if you aren't a scary greedy cash money monster, if you have two kids to send to college, you need to keep your job no matter how much or how little you personally have investment in your research. A lot of researchers (like my dad) really enjoy the process of discovery and creative problem-solving that is inherent in research.
Money is a really difficult thing that gets imposed on everything people do nowadays. It's refreshing to think about society without money or constraints of endowments, but it's also difficult to imagine how the current global culture would function without currencies. But on a small scale, I'll bake you brownies and you can teach me how to grow fish in a rain-collection barrel. Deal?