According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 70 percent of parents surveyed were “very concerned” about how they would pay for college; only 6 percent were not concerned.
http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080412/1194764499175.html?.v=5
Should education be this:
http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=25819
The main aim of the Finnish education system is to ensure that the entire population has access to education and training. The principle of lifelong learning, the idea that people are always capable of learning new things at all stages of life, is an important principle for all education provision, from basic schooling to adult education.
Or should it be this (from main article):
Students attending several expensive and wealthy colleges will enjoy expanded financial aid, as those institutions move to replace need-based loans with grants. Harvard and Yale recently announced expansions of aid to families making as much as $150,000, displaying a degree of generosity that few institutions can match.
Quite simply, we do not know from which socio-economic stratum the next "Einstein" will come -- except that we are beginning to construct roadblocks to ensure where the next genius will NOT come from.
In an increasingly knowledge-based society, can we honestly afford to shut out the majority of citizens from educational excellence?

http://koreanpower999.wordpress.com/200 ... ll-chosen/
Senator Barack Obama fought back Saturday against accusations from his rivals that he had displayed a profound misunderstanding of small-town values, in a flare-up that left him on the defensive before a series of primaries that could test his ability to win over white voters in economically distressed communities.
For a second day, Mr. Obama sought to explain his remarks at a recent San Francisco fund-raiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations.
Mr. Obama, of Illinois, had already been under pressure to show that he was capable of connecting with voters in industrial states who have been hit hard by years of economic upheaval and now feel especially vulnerable in the new downturn.
The country was still bombed out , there was a tremendous housing shortage, and the Labour govt. has made some stupid decisions, like the nationalization of all trucking outfits, but they also made some excellent ones and virtually free education certainly was one of them.
The talent that goes down the drain at the present time, for the lack of imaginary money invested in the right causes, is a crime wave in itself, but it is "economically efficient" in the warped minds of economists and politicians.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.
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