Journal ftide's Journal: Attending *.edu is a right! 1
Education is a right.
I am a wealthy individual who was once wealthy, then poor and then finally got it together. I've been having a difficult time getting into our local university not over matters of aptitude but because of finance. I refuse to play the ''spend yourself into a little debt, then rack up more debt plus a hefty interest rate, then back down to less debt'' game that so many Americans my age and younger get into and are broke as a result.
Is there some reason that the right to education is not being advertised by those other then students?
How can U.S. universities be public institutions which serve on one side and yet be completely bureaucratic entrenched private profit hoarders who encourage malfeasance by allowing students to accrue debt [1] on the other end? College professors and employees across the nation know that many if not most students cannot afford to pay for a 4 year education with money themselves.
If you're a U.S. citizen and want to attend a college in the States, you must: (A) have rich parents, (B) get the Pell Grant plus receive enough scholarships immediately after exiting high school, plus debt and wages, or (C) maximization of debt, plus wages and a limited array of scholarships. In Oregon, university scholarships are largely controlled by the Oregon student assistance commission begun in 1959 [2] which is less of an external, scrutinized commission as it should be and more of a private governance board who only once a year opens the financial valves to dispense funds. Many of the scholarships are for high school students only, for people who graduated from high school in a specific region or for minorities.
These intransigent financial and operational positions the colleges take and have forced many folks into make me believe the entire corporate, private profit side of these public institutions needs to be reformed. This area needs to be replaced by a radical non-corporate for-profit enterprise system which lets people of all economic stratas attend school. The intriguing thing is I don't think most provosts and high level university administrators will at all reject redacting the powerful roles of debt lenders and corporations if a measurable alternative is laid out and has checks, balances and measurable oversight to be ready for engagement.
It should be as simple as this: if you show up then you get to attend school.
A key element in solving this nation's access to education crisis is a better means to earning wages, higher wages and stopping income inequality and hunger for good.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malfeasance
[2] http://www.osac.state.or.us/
Turn it around (Score:2)
Which is why things are the way they are. Gutting education gets you a stupid, poor and hungry populace, easier to manage generally and easier to rile up with distorted facts when the need arises. The (relatively) few who do get the education are either already part of the ruling class (all good) or get saddled with enough debt to have th