How to Pay for College

Not by loans and not by income sharing!  Although these are today’s common ways of financing higher education.  They are legal exploitation of the less endowed citizens.

In a civilized society, education, in any form, should be a legal right of every subject, and paid for by the government (or the society as a whole).  In many countries this is already the case for elementary school, to learn spelling and arithmetic.  If this makes sense, then logic demands that any further learning should also be paid for by the State, for it’s in the public interest to have a well educated populace, to the maximum possible.

That means that the population needs to vote to increase taxation or otherwise raise the funds to finance more education.  It’s because of this lack of initiative and consensus that today’s conditions exist.  Therefore, politicians and taxpayers, please get your act together and make education a national priority, financing it properly, as you’ve done for elementary school already.

This doesn’t mean pumping money into high cost and for-profit institutions.  Of course whatever “free” education must be provided in a frugal yet highly effective format.  In my humble opinion, ONLINE is the answer here.  At least, I’m sure, 90% or more of the learning CAN be done ONLINE.

It may take some time until progressive nations will come to that status.  So, in the meantime, there are many ways of how whatever education can be obtained at minimal or no cost at all.  Most of that is ONLINE and which we’ve been highlighting in our blog since years.

That raises another issue though, i.e. the question of the reputation or perceived prestige of the college one is going to attend.  From my experience, though, that issue is highly overrated.  If we check the list of success stories, in business (examples: Walt Disney, Ted Turner = founder of CNN) and government (examples: Winston Churchill, Harry Truman), we’ll find that many did NOT graduate from a prestige college, yet got their education through very ordinary institutions, if not through hard knocks in an ordinary life.

The truth is that education need not be obtained through name schools, but can be obtained in many other ways as well, maybe in many ways even better.

And again, in today’s world, ONLINE is one great avenue therefor.