Reflection 12

We had a very interesting discussion in class this week about who deserves an education and what it means to attain an education. A few people brought up the point that it is possible for someone to attain higher education, and if they could not afford it, that they would find a way to pay for their education. And I could not disagree more. In this country, to go to a good university, it can cost up to $50,000 a year. To a good percentage of the population, that is more than a yearly salary. It is not possible for those people to send their children to a school like American University. Some would respond: Well what about financial aid? It is true that schools offer financial aid to students who need it, but it is simply impossible to offer full scholarships to everyone who needs them. And even at Ivy League institutions, where the average gpa of an accepted student is 4.0 and SAT scores are close to perfect, it is not possible to offer every poor child who gets those figures full financial aid, and there is not even a guarantee of getting in to that school when every single applicant to that school has a perfect gpa and perfect SAT and AP scores as well. It simply is not fair that a student with a 3.0 gpa, 1670 SAT score and no AP's can go to college because they can afford it and a student with a 4.0 GPA, 2300 SAT score and all 4's and 5's on several AP's cannot go to that same school because they cannot afford it, even with financial aid.

The University of Oxford in England costs 3,375 pounds, or approximately 5418 dollars a year to attend. The University of Tokyo in Japan costs 535,000 Yen, or approximately 6446 dollars a year to attend. Australian National University in Australia costs 8859 australian dollars, or approximately 8723 US dollars at the most to attend. It is highly unlikely that in these countries, there is a big issue with money when thinking about going to University. And in these countries, education is no joke. You have to work unbelievably hard to get into University in those countries as well. The people who are informed about the educational situation in these countries would say that the only reason it is so cheap to go to school in these countries is because the government funds education. Exactly. In most of the modernized world, the government subsidizes education, and there is no reason why it shouldn't be done in the US as well. the privatization of education does nothing but drive up the price of education, causing it to be nearly impossible for the poor to attend a very good university. A person should not have to choose what school they go to based on the amount of money they get from that school. Some of the best minds come from the working and lower classes, and they are being deprived of many opportunities because they cant afford higher education.