by Marina Shemesh

Created on: May 08, 2008   Last Updated: January 10, 2009

Isaac Newton, the seventeenth century scientist replied "nanos gigantum humeris insidentes" when he was complemented on his scientific contributions to society. The Latin phrase literary means that he was a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants.

What Newton meant by that is that you develop "future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past". Without those that came before we will not be where we are today.

Just think what we are depriving our generation and future generations if college education should not be available to the many. Not everybody is Albert Einstein, or Isaac Newton, so we should hedge our bets and educate as many people as possible. One never knows where the next invention will come from.

It is a known fact that a solution is only looked for when a problem is encountered. The tin opener was only invented after years of struggling with to open tins. Before someone figured out how to preserve food, nobody even dreamed of tin openers.

By providing college education to the many you supply a lot more people with the tools to solve solutions in their lives as they encounter them. The washing machine, the electrical iron and even the humble mop came into existence because somebody got fed up with what was available at that time.

If a college education is only available to the few, who should go to college? By choosing only the rich, some very clever people would be excluded.

So say that only geniuses are allowed to go to college. Not every person with a high IQ manages to graduate from college. They are not always the most practical of people. The sky scrapers of tomorrow are being built by engineers with their feet firmly on the ground.

Then there is also the question of who decides who gets to go to college. We are only human and it is our nature to look out for our own children and those of friends or families. If only a few where allowed to attend college, we are opening a way where people can and will be taking bribes.

As our technology advances, having just a high school diploma is not enough. We need to educate as many people for as long as possible. Having an educated population will mean that less people will be left behind, be a burden for the state or end up in jail.

No matter how you look at it, a college education should be available to anybody that can pass the entrance exam. What should concern us, is how to make it affordable to anybody who wish to further his or her education. Just think how far we will reach if we have giants standing on giants's shoulders, who are also standing on giants's shoulders.

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