HIGHER EDUCATION...A RIGHT?

The Question:  Simply put, do students have a right to a college education?

The Issue:  It is no secret that the various States are experiencing one of the worst budget situations in living memory.  State universities are cutting budgets for higher education, and schools are eliminating courses, majors, increasing class sizes, and raising tuition by double digit amounts.  Around the nation students and faculty have been protesting these actions arguing that these actions infringe on the students' right to receive a college education.  This, however, begs the ethical question as to whether in fact a college education is a matter of right.  Of course if we answer this question in the affirmative, then this results in a corresponding duty on society to provide that education, and many of the protesters' arguments are well founded. If, on the other hand, it is a privilege, then there is no such corresponding duty, and the market will do what the market does.

I say: It is a privilege. It is currently popular to argue that "anyone who wants to go to college should be able to do, without worrying about how to pay for it."  I believe that this misses some crucial points.  First, and with going on 30 years in higher education, I maintain that college is as much or more a question of intellectual ability as it is the financial ability to pay for it. Simply because a student may want a college degree does not mean that he or she has the ability to achieve one. Every term I have to fail a student in my courses.  This is not always because the student did not study.  Most of the time it is because the material was simply beyond the student's personal ability to master it.  This is not meant as a personal criticism of the student.  We all have our own unique abilities.  I can attest that there are probably hundreds of people alive and well in Chicago today who would probably otherwise not be so if I had gone to medical school.  I liked science courses.  I just wasn't all that good at them.  Some of use have skills in the fine arts such as music.  Others of us do not. Athletic ability is another obvious example.  I knew since early high school that a career in the NFL was probably not going to happen.  You get the point.  I disagree with a lot of the comments that I hear touting the importance, indeed almost the necessity of having a college education. This does a great injustice to all of those who either decide that college is not for them. or whose abilities are elsewhere. 

The second issue being missed, and this is too large an issue to go into in detail in this post, is what exactly constitutes a "university educated person." It has been argued that colleges have become nothing more than glorified trade schools, especially colleges of business.  Is it the primary purpose of a college education to train someone for a future job?  Or is that task better left to other institutions?

The counter argument to my first point is well, ok, if a student does in fact have the ability to do college level work, and wants to do so, should he or she be prevented from doing so simply because they do not have the means to pay for it. Arguably not.  However, is it the role/duty of government/society to provide that funding, or is this something better left to the free market to provide. Your thoughts.