My cities tend to spring up pretty fast in the game, and given the rapid development, I'm constantly raising the funding for schools and hospitals. I'm not really the kind of player that likes to fund each school precisely what it needs, so I tend just to slide the bar way above what I need, and as soon as there is a strike I'll just build another school.

So basically, just out of curiosity, do overfunded schools provide better education, or is it just a total waste of money entirely?

-Blake

Yes and no. They over-funded schools don't provide "better" education, they only handle more sims. To provide better education you have to place all the roots of eductaion, AKA, elementary school, high school, museums, libraries, universities, colleges, those raise the IQ quite significatly, beware, this system sucks up lots of money and fast, so you have to have good funds for it. But a large city should be able to produce the money required to run this.

LC, VC

I do the same Blake but I choose fewer schools and never get overcrowding as a result. Nor do I get rioting

A big part of it is that I'm usually too lazy to check how much funding I actually need I usually can keep my tax base growing, so usually I won't worry about cutting funding until I have a need to.

The main exception for me is with the hospitals. Even one of those small clinics costs $400+/month, and honestly that's a bit pricey It gets more sims in work though, so it always pays off.