Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SECONDARY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE-THE COLLEGE AND THE DEVELOPING, MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEM - The modernization of financial management
SECONDARY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 138 The gym designed by Ernő Wallandt and Károly Bódogh was built with the cost of 5.538 HUF in 1878 medication. Numerous donations, mostly from parents, helped swell the capital in this fund. For former students, or alumni, of Patak, this mode proved to be the most popular way of making a contribution to the College. For a short duration, this society assumed, in part, the operation of the College Hospital. Nonetheless, the society was not able to cover all the expenses which it incurred in this way and had to rely on collaboration with the Board, thus indicating that the need for common cooperation between students and the Board was great. The latter used College and church funds to pay the nurses as well as the lighting and heating costs. This type of solution proved helpful in overcoming the nearly constant difficulties of former years. A case in point was that while in 1865 they had to let the hospital caterer go because of financial difficulties and thus every patient had to rely on his/her own food provider, in 1873 the Board made a decision to enlarge the hospital, to buy new equipment and to build a separate ward and bathroom for patients with contagious illnesses. The fact that this latter ward was only completed and opened fifteen years later was nothing more than an indication of the contemporary conditions. The College Hospital and the Patients Assistance Society eventually received due recognition and gained national fame. As a consquence of this, the College doctor, the hospital and the society were connected by a telephone line in 1890. The other, similar society was the College Student Loan Fund. Membership fees were the source of its base capital, which was then given out in loans for interest and thus accumulated nicely. This Fund operated in a restricted way, making loans exclusively to students with financial difficulties. Like the Patients Assistance Society, this Fund was also assisted by the Board which provided the starting capital for their operations. In addition to managing the daily operations of the College, the management was able to make very substantial improvements in this era as well. It is to be recalled that the school treasury was almost empty in 1850. In comparison, hardly ten years later, the teacher training program was re-started, the number of secondary school teachers on staff was increased according to centralized standards and decades later the Academy of Law once again began to function on the banks of the Bodrog River. It will be explained in greater detail further on how the Academy of Law constantly presented an ever-increasing financial burden on the leadership of the College and its superiors, thus all developments on this front always demanded significant amounts of energy. Nonetheless, major construction projects were also realized in these decades, the dining-hall, for instance, was launched into operation. In addition to their own hospital, the students in Patak also had the use of the country’s first school-owned gymnasium. The College once again became the hub of intensive cultural and community activity where the publishing of books, monographs and a self-edited journal, as well as expanding domestic and international relations, marked this process. A particularly noteworthy development in 1862, which was a trailblazing movement not only in the country but also by international standards, was the founding of the Teachers’ Pension Fund Institute. Its operation called for deducting twelve forints per year from every teacher’s salary but, at long term, this deduction would have proven to be insufficient for making the necessary pension payments to the retiring teachers and subsequently to their widows or orphans, so additional sources had to be found and the necessary funds
