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Thursday, February 25, 2010

TDA: Should the ability to pursue a higher education be a right, regardless of finances?�|�Daily Titan

TDA: Should the ability to pursue a higher education be a right, regardless of finances?�|�Daily Titan

Education should be a right for everyone. Those who wish to succeed in life and increase their efficiency throughout the work force by achieving a higher level of education, deserve it. However, obstacles such as finances always seem to come to play with such controversial topics such as this. For those who are not financially privileged, they don’t have many choices.
Those who do not have the funds to participate in higher-level learning, often turn to the military. Yet, according to an article on nybooks.com, the government spends about $40 billion every three or four months just to be in Iraq. See the irony? Wouldn’t it just be easier and morally sound to spend that money to help students by sending them to school and not sending those same people to war? I understand that there are reasons why we can’t just pull out of the war, but that’s a different story.
I realize that some colleges do offer help through financial aid, but only if you are approved. As luck would have it, you sometimes need to be financially stable to be approved for that as well. It’s like when trying to apply for your first credit card, you need credit to obtain it, but without someone’s help, you’re not going to get accepted. It’s an endless cycle that can only be broken if you find financial means elsewhere.
Scholarships are great if you earn them early on in your educational career, but what about those who performed poorly earlier in their lives, but have recently found motivation to do well in life? Should we really be restricting students with inspiration to succeed, after they just left a gang, or strayed from other unfortunate decisions that they had made earlier? These are the ones that need it the most. It’s hard to imagine