Privatize, privatize, privatize

[mrnoodle]

Education

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

Education

So the wealthy who can afford the best education get better educated and maintain an advantage over the lower classes, ad infinitum. Yeah, that'll ensure that power/wealth stay in the family. Sounds like an educational feudal system.

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

So the wealthy who can afford the best education get better educated and maintain an advantage over the lower classes, ad infinitum. Yeah, that'll ensure that power/wealth stay in the family. Sounds like an educational feudal system.

The wealthy will always have access to the finest education. But, as Clodfobble illustrates, educating the wealthy in no way crowds out the unwealthy from receiving the finest instruction available.

Not only are Yale classes online but MIT has open-sourced its courses as has Cal Berkeley and many other top-tier institutions of higher learning.

My best childhood friend and I grew up in the lower-middle class deep south and graduated from a pitiful excuse of a public school. He, without any connections whatsoever, was granted a full scholarship to Harvard based solely on his academic achievement.

In America, the people that work the hardest get the rewards. It almost never fails that those who object to this are the ones who failed to capitalize (pun intended) on the opportunity that was as available to them as it was to those who passed them by.

There will always be a privileged class. But no nation in the world has made it easier to join that class than America. The job of government and law isn't to punish ambition and reward the lack of it, its to ensure that those who are willing to do what it takes are not held back in any way, shape or form.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Beestie

The wealthy will always have access to the finest education. But, as Clodfobble illustrates, educating the wealthy in no way crowds out the unwealthy from receiving the finest instruction available.

My take on Clodfobbles post was that you really don't necessarily get "the finest education" and I agree with that. What happens is that you pay a huge sum of money to have the name of a prestigious institution on your diploma, and while you are at the school, you get to make connections with others who control wealth. After graduation, it's the good-ole-boy network, where someone hiring (they are in that position already because they or a relative control wealth) hire those with whom they have a connection (made in college). And so the money stays in the same hands, it rarely goes to someone who shows extraordinary talent or results.

Originally Posted by Beestie

My best childhood friend and I grew up in the lower-middle class deep south and graduated from a pitiful excuse of a public school. He, without any connections whatsoever, was granted a full scholarship to Harvard based solely on his academic achievement....

Thank goodness for college quotas, eh? This rarely happens.