In most of the Asian education systems, students have to take entrance examinations for admission to engineering, business or medical colleges. Depending on a student's performance on just one test, the student is given a rank. In India, a university might have 3,000 spots to fill (after a 50 percent lower-caste reservation), and one incorrect answer can bump you down 50 ranks. It is highly competitive because of the vast number of qualified students who take this test, and if one does not make the cut, one must take a gap year.
So what happens to the lucky few who woke up on the right side of the bed that morning? Do they truly get to choose their concentration? Not really: the number of students concentrating in a particular field is capped. Therefore, the first few hundred students by rank may get the concentration of their choice, but the rest are forced to make the best of the options available to them, even if their only choice is textile engineering.
Does this lack of choices scare you?
Let me take you back to your high school days. In your senior year, did you find that your Brown application was magically completed one day and mailed the next? Probably not. You consciously answered all the questions on Brown's application, wrote the essays and submitted your grades knowing that you were the right fit for Brown. Some of you might even have visited this University and knew exactly what Brown stood for — a multidisciplinary education where you craft your own path to a future. I am sure you could not write one critical remark about Brown in your application essays, let alone mention that Brown is an evil corporation. Everyone talked about how Brown is the perfect fit for their mentality and Brown's admission office agreed. And here you are.
If I'm to believe that students apply or transfer to Brown just because it is "less corporatized" than other universities, I would have been born yesterday. It's actually funny how we find ourselves in the company of colleagues who are saviors to an organization that has been providing a high standard of education since 1764. If you believe in survival of the fittest, then Brown is a perfect example of an organization that has survived and prospered with the same educational freedoms upon which it was founded while foraying into newer domains. It has not only lived through the American fight for independence, but two world wars and countless recessions and depressions. If you think that it needs to rethink how it utilizes its resources to survive in the coming years, you must have been born yesterday.
In the scariest and most thoughtless column I've read in the past few weeks ("Raising our Brown taxes," Oct. 7), Susannah Kroeber '11 demands a massive increase in tuition, primarily at the expense of the wealthy. Although it is very noble of her to want a greater debt-free student population and more financial aid for students who cannot afford to enroll at this institution otherwise, her idea of forcing the wealthy students to pay more to subsidize the tuition cost for a less fortunate student is unfounded. She is not allowing them the choice to pay more.
Charity comes from within; it cannot be forced. I challenge Kroeber to ask her parents to donate their hard-earned money to subsidize education for the less fortunate. She should set an example for all of us by starting a scholarship grant for students through the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars she expects the wealthy to pay as tuition. That would certainly inspire the rest of us to follow her example.
Furthermore, it's startling that Kroeber never raised the question of moral hazard. If the students on financial aid have all their needs covered, does she expect them to actually make the most of their education? One can see a situation where students without financial aid are struggling to pay tuition and hence every grade matters to them. What message is sent to them when they see their debt-free counterparts partying more than they get to? What forces these debt-free students to give back to Brown once they start getting a regular paycheck? Practically speaking, if you force students with wealthy parents' to pay more, they will take their business to other universities, perhaps even to another country.
America is a country that promises us choice, from the toothbrush you use to the career you choose. This is quite possibly why the communist nations never survived and never will. There isn't a government telling you if you are smart enough to be coal miner or an officer in the Communist Party. You can drop out of school and start your own business if you like. You may then allocate the wealth you have earned and dedicate it to causes you feel are important — be it a noble cause, like curing AIDS, or a selfish one, like making sure you don't need to walk from your bedroom to your bathroom. Therefore, my friends, if you really cannot stand how a corporatized Brown is wasting (not your) money, why don't you transfer out? You always have that choice.
Manas Gautam '12 gives lessons in fishing and can be reached at mg (at) brown.edu
