Education for All?

I was reminded of my last letter to the editor last night as I wrote again to the editor of the local newspaper. Back then I was living in Tennessee and I argued for the creation of a state lottery. The lottery was designed to provide higher education access to students that would otherwise not be able to afford it. A lofty dream then when I was a graduate student in history; now, having spent considerable time on the "other side" of the desk as a professor, I see the complete error of that opinion.

Higher education should not be for all. Some people are not cut out to go to university and have no business being there. The results of lottery-financed students are the watering down of education, overcrowding of classrooms, over taxation of already strained teaching faculty, and worst of all, the erosion of the ideals of enlightened thought! Our universities (the ones that are glutted with lottery-financed students) have become breeding grounds for mediocrity!!

Some people were not meant for college...period. Vocational jobs require workers as well and the delusion that someone of substandard ability can achieve in a university classroom is wholly without merit while they could succeed in other, less academically challenging, environments. Call me an elitist if you will, but universities are symbolic of the elite. They have been for millennia!!

I say take lottery money and put it to use in the universities by increasing staff and faculty wages, buying new resources and equipment, and expanding areas of study. The last thing needed are more substandard students clogging the hallowed hallways of learning.