USA University

I have always believed that one of the great assets our country has enjoyed compared to the rest of the world are our colleges and universities.  An recent article in The Wall Street Journal provides some great support for that position.

• 154 of the top 500 universities in the world are in the United States.  China has 22, Brazil 6, Russia and India 2 each.
• For every 100 college-aged people in the United States, there are 82 enrolled in a college or university.  This compares to 75 in Russia, 30 in Brazil, 22 in China and 13 in India.

Source: The Wall Street Journal 4/5/2011

What makes the American system so great is its accessibility.  There are lots of great schools and they are open to almost everyone.  This is not the case in most other countries.  There are fewer options and the system of admissions falls far short of egalitarianism.  Only a small sub-set of the population will usually have the opportunity to get into a university.

Contrast this with the United States where there is so much opportunity.  Does having money help?  Absolutely.  However, there is no other country in the world that provides more young people of every walk of life the opportunity to get a college degree.  Grants, loans, athletic and academic scholarships are all available if a student works hard and has the grades and test scores to back it up.

Don't ever buy into the cries that the deck is stacked against people in this country who want to advance.  There has never been a country in the history of the world that provided more opportunity for every single person to make something of themselves.  Our universities are clear evidence of that.  In the 2009/2010 academic year there were almost 700,000 foreign students in our universities according to the Institute of International Education out of a total college enrollment of 19.5 million students.  128,000 of those students were from China.  105,000 were from India.  40 years ago, there were barely 100,000 foreign students in total in this country.  People from all over the world seek out our higher education.

These foreign students come here thousands of miles from home.  They take classes in a language that is not natural to them.  They live in a culture far removed from what they knew growing up.  They succeed.

American students, what is your excuse?  You have more opportunity available to you than anywhere else in the world.