Education Inequalities (Part II)

In the wake of college tuition raises across the world, many people wonder who would pay those enormous figures to put in school a bunch of brats? The answer does not come as a surprise when well off middle easterns, asians and latinamericans make the bulk of those who pays full tuition at world class institutions.

Despite a world financial crisis, the influx of international students at universities across Europe and North America have increased exponentially. Solid economic growth in the emergent markets with a new middle class with deep pockets and aspirations to compete globally, keep  some faces smiling.

Live after graduation for the talented and privileged alumni from universities such as: Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, among others; are far different from the graduates of colleges in the third world. With salary caps and competitive disadvantages, becoming a terrifying reality for the less “gifted”.

Get worse, in Latinamerica not every high school graduate has the opportunity to be admitted at a public university, some of them centuries old and with a fairly decent faculty. Decades of demographic pressure and stagnant budgets for universitiy expansion, have put a limit in providing public tertiary education to the youth.

For the business savy entrepreneurs the opportunity seems too tempting to let it pass by, hundreds of private universities have opened throughout the region, in order to satisfy the demand created by inefficient goverments, lower grades and a saturated public system.

As a result of having an improvised vision of formal education, the quality gets compromised, the professionals graduated from most private universities founded within the last twenty years, most likely would lack of the sufficient skills to break away from the improvisation cycle.

How about who does not have any means to pay for education? Unfortunately, they would have to attend some recently created tertiary institutions, where virtual classes are not necesarily cutting edge concept but a cost cutting product. Recent student riots in Chile has questioned states subsidies for private eductation, while tuitions still high.