Chapter 705: Chapter 397, Education is the Top Priority_2
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She would have to finish with the matters of the Flying Wing Star Shipyard before anything else.
It’s a massive project.
Fortunately, most of the difficulties had already been dealt with, and what remained was for the production management officers dispatched by the Alliance to clear up the entire production process.
Once the first ship was completed under the Alliance’s takeover, and they became familiar with the process, the issues that followed would become increasingly simpler.
Overall, Gu Hang was quite satisfied with the progress, so he shifted his attention slightly away and turned to look at the numerous universities on Flying Wing Star.
…
The education system on Flying Wing Star was also very developed. Here, it was not only the educational center of Tianma Star Sector but also a prime educational destination for many surrounding Star Sectors. For many, it was an honor to gain admission into the universities of Flying Wing Star.
But in general, education is something that requires investment.
While these tens of thousands of universities on Flying Wing Star created tremendous value, if one only considered investment and returns, subtracting the costs, these universities combined barely made a profit of about a hundred million.
However, Gu Hang’s perspective was never limited to the immediate future.
In his view, the developed education system of Flying Wing Star was the best solution to the current severe shortage of administrative and technical bureaucrats.
The current Alliance, after many years of development, could no longer be considered a makeshift organization. However, it was certainly inadequate compared to the scope of power it now controlled.
This problem had erupted after the Alliance took over Korolya, and it had only grown more severe.
Source: NovelFull.com, updated on ƝονǤ0.ᴄᴑ
The administrative officers under Gu Hang’s current government came from rather mixed origins.
The most core group was, of course, the people from Rage Owl Star. A vast majority of those in high positions within the Alliance Government were Rage Owl Star People. These individuals who had risen with Gu Hang now occupied high positions, wielded significant authority, and enjoyed superior benefits. They were the most central people under Gu Hang’s rule.
But they were also the fewest in number.
As more planets fell under the control of the Alliance, the ruling classes of these planets, whether they had been eliminated or not, at least retained a substantial part of their administrative bureaucracy.
It had to be preserved; otherwise, who would do the work?
Among these groups, the Heijian Star People had fared rather well. Although the Alliance had fought a battle against the local forces in controlling Heijian Star, the conflict was not particularly bloody, nor did it last very long, leaving no deep-seated enmities. Many kingdoms, after their surrender, like the Iron Curtain Queen Isabel and the King of Panbos Kingdom, Eureka, even managed to find their own places within the Alliance.
And on Korolya, many former officers of the Planetary Government, as long as they didn’t make trouble and worked faithfully for the Alliance, also were appointed to official posts. On Fatchess Tri-Star and Flying Wing Star, not just the administrative officers, but even the government structures were largely preserved…
But Gu Hang did not want this situation to continue indefinitely.
The risks hidden within were not insignificant.
He used the Loyal Heir Academy and the political commissar training under the Military Badge function to solve some particularly thorny issues, but that was also not a complete solution, as he did not have enough Favor Points to spare.
The mitigation strategy he could think of was to utilize officials from other regions.
It was observable that those former rulers of Heijian Star shone not in their traditional strongholds, but rather when they were largely transferred to Korolya; Heijian Star’s initial governance heavily relied on people from Rage Owl Star, but with Korolya in hand, a significant number of Korolya’s officers were redeployed to Heijian Star to work.
Fatchess Tri-Star and Flying Wing Star having been controlled not too long ago, it was clear that similar maneuvers were bound to follow.
But this was also a stopgap measure and brought its own set of risks.
The fundamental problem still lied in the fact that there were too few qualified officials whom Gu Hang could genuinely trust and who truly embraced the ideals of the Alliance.
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This thing cannot be faked; it must rely on self-cultivation.
Loyal Heir Academy is one path, but Gu Hang planned to build more. Even without making use of the system’s training function, simply using Loyal Heir Academy as an educational institution to cultivate students, its role would still be immense; it would just take longer to cultivate them.
For now, the emergency period had been weathered thanks to the tens of thousands of officials nurtured by the hundreds of thousands of grace points previously bestowed by Gu Hang. Thus, the urgency wasn’t as great.
However, what Loyal Heir Academy could solve were only issues of ideology and loyalty; it could not solve the problem of officials’ competence. Mediocre talent, even after training, would only become loyal mediocrity.
The advanced educational system on Flying Wing Star was regarded by Gu Hang as a good solution.
After a thorough inspection, Gu Hang already had several clear methods for establishing a training system for administrative civil servants.
First was retraining existing officials. The Alliance Government would fund this, allowing officials of all levels and types from various planets to have the opportunity to study and further their education. They would be arranged to relearn in various majors at universities on Flying Wing Star according to their type of work and job content.
They would enter the special training programs offered by various academies for study.
Secondly, the Alliance Government would recruit some young people and sign long-term contracts with them. The Alliance would provide educational opportunities and student loans, and these youths would need to study hard in school; after graduation, they would go to the designated places as stipulated by the contracts, serve for a certain number of years, and repay their loans.
Through this entrusted training model, young people with talent and potential from the lower classes could find better opportunities, and corresponding government units could acquire a steady supply of fresh talent.
Of course, these students would also have certain academic requirements. They would need to keep their grades up to standard, or even excellent, in order to fulfill their contracts and secure jobs. Otherwise, if their grades were a mess and their original units didn’t want them after graduation, they would have to find a job on their own to repay their loans.
However, this was a better path than the original one, regardless.
Whether it’s in-service training for current civil servants or targeted training programs, these are initiatives launched from the government level, aiming at training a large number of government officials. It was estimated that the number of students in both categories would exceed one million annually and would continue until the Alliance Government had preliminarily resolved the shortage of civil servants, at which point they would gradually cut down on the numbers.
For this, the Alliance’s annual education budget would need to reach tens of millions of tax currency.
This was no small amount of money.
How much was Rage Owl Star’s Imperial Tax per year? It wasn’t even a fraction of the current education budget.
But the situation could also be seen positively.
This would indeed be a massive expenditure, but in actuality, the expenditure should only appear on paper. The many universities on Flying Wing Star would naturally all be nationalized for management in the future. Accordingly, the expenses would be recorded on the government’s expenditure sheet, consuming the budget, but they would also appear on the academy’s income statements and be turned over.
Of course, one round of circulation still carries significant meaning. The essence of the economy lies in circulation and exchange.
With such a rotation, government officials received training, broadened their horizons; the academic institutions increased their student base, increased their revenue, and could accommodate more educators; the series of economic activities surrounding the academies would become more prosperous.
Besides these two types of direct training, the Alliance also had restructuring requirements for the many universities on Flying Wing Star.
Mainly, on top of the existing variety of professional courses, a course on ideological education was mandatory to add. Whether for each academic year or for graduation, this course’s grades would be included in the assessment criteria for all programs.
The course content and materials would be provided by the Alliance’s Loyal Heir Academy, aiming to cultivate a widespread sense of identification with the Alliance’s philosophy right from the cradle of Alliance talents, at the start. No matter which industry these students would end up in, this subtly inculcated sense of identification would play a role.
Additionally, in terms of employment, governments from around the Alliance would come to the universities on Flying Wing Star to conduct direct recruitment, just like many businesses would.
This recruitment, while requiring professional competencies, would inevitably have additional special requirements for the grades in the ideological education course.
Through this three-pronged approach, Gu Hang hoped to gradually complete the replenishment and revitalization of the Alliance Government’s personnel within the coming years.