Are you sure "everyone" can afford a high class education in the US? Isn't community college meant to be... you know.... crap?
Not always. I mean, most community colleges aren't fantastic, but if you go there and work hard you can do anything. The community college in my town was so renowned for its incredibly hard engineering program that after 2 years there, my dad was able to transfer to Clarkson, a pretty good 4 year engineering university, and they gave him 2.5 years worth of credits because they said his community college was so tough.
And even aside from Community College, there's state schools and city schools that are very very cheap. Schools like the University of California system, or the SUNY/CUNY (State University of NY/City University of NY) system offer fantastic programs. CUNY advertises their schools all over the subways, and every single year they have 2 or 3 students whose pictures end up plastered all over because they went to CUNY and then were selected as Rhodes Scholars, Marshall/Truman Fellows, or got into Yale or Harvard Law Schools. Even just in my own very limited experience - there were twin brothers from my high school who I played soccer with. They grew up pretty poor, slacked off during HS and just generally didn't do that well. Both ended up attending SUNY schools that were okay, but not great. One of them busted his ***, got a 4.0, transferred to Cornell (an Ivy), and ended up getting a half ride to a top tier law school. The other one busted his ***, stayed at the SUNY, was selected as a Goldwater Scholar, and ended up getting a nearly full ride to a top 20 Med School.
So the high class education, the Yales, the Harvards, the Standfords, is for the rich elite, who buy their way into these universities. Please correct me if I'm wrong though.
It might have been like that 50 years ago, or even 20, but it honestly isn't anymore. The figures on diversity at the top schools are higher than they've ever been. Harvard, for example, waives all tuition, fees, and room/board if one of their students has a family income of below 40,000. Completely free to attend.
What are the odds that an intelligent Latino girl from Queens whose family can barely keep their house going to an Ivy League School?
Much better than you might think, and I actually can speak to this one with certainty. Last fall, a few other students and I hosted a college application panel for a group of about 25 kids from a charter school in Brooklyn. This was a school that was made up of almost 100% minority/low-income students, but who were very driven and had showed promise. They asked us tons of questions about applying to school, where to go, etc etc etc. At the end of the event, one of the latino girls who had been really quiet went up to the man who had organized the whole thing (a baller I-banker), and talked to him for a little while. After they finished, she seemed much happier and followed the other kids out of the room. He came over to us to tell us what she had said:
Apparently, this girl was the valedictorian of her class, was great at sports, and had killed the SAT's. She wanted to got to Harvard, but there was just one problem. She and her entire family were illegal immigrants. The guy was a first generation immigrant himself who had gone to Harvard, so he made some phone calls, explained the situation, talked to the people in admissions, and that girl is now Harvard University, Class of '11, on a full "Chancellor's Grant" that covers all of her tuition, so that she doesn't have to file forms for federal financial aid (which she can't).
Things like that happen all the time, and while I'm not going to be naive and pretend that the chances of a poor immigrant from the barrio getting into Yale are the same as the chances of Francis J. Pemberworth III, it's by no means impossible.
(Whew, long post, and probably way more than you wanted to know)
