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Comment by blobbers | Hacker News Reader

Not everyone in the USA needs to go to an elite, great or even good school. What they need is to be taught a little bit about the world, and they need to be taught the value of hard work.

These days all the poor people just want to be fed dreams of "passive income" and have "fulfilling jobs". Most jobs = trading time for money. Harder the job, more money you get. So work hard at school, you get more money at your job, maybe. Or you go into sales, marketing, leadership or business.

Why do people always try to blame someone else for their problem? The "elites". Because they don't realize that the only thing stopping them is the person they see in the mirror.

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I think you're out of touch with the realities of being poor. Are you familiar with the ghetto tax?

Let me tell you the situation of an old friend. He was working his ass off to put himself through college even with scholarships because his family was too poor to pay for anything and could not qualify for a loan. He worked one job taking care of his special needs brother, and another job at a brewery while getting his degree. Over the summer, he worked three jobs to cover the bills for college. After college he got a job, but still needed to take care of his brother along with his mom (who has no money, dad's out of the picture) - extra cash went to help his mom. His brother could not get a job because as soon as a special needs person has more than 2k in assets, they no longer qualify for help and the extra cash needed to shepherd him through the time with no help is not available. His mom doesn't really make money, but how many people are going to not take care of the single mom that raised them? _Everything_ is a struggle - constantly. It is exhausting for him, and I dare say that most humans would not match his grit. Passive income is a desperate hope to bridge the gaps.

There are plenty of dumbass florida-man people, but writing off poor people for lack of effort is not a useful generalization.

> Let me tell you the situation of an old friend.

Your friend accomplished more for his effort. He supported his family and himself during education. Of course it was much harder. So did my father, had no resources from his parents, he had to sacrifice his studies to support his sister and finished university years later.

I don't think money is the real barrier, it's attitude towards learning. Some families are more "educational" even if they are not rich. The best academics do not come from the richest families, I think there is even a negative correlation between wealth and academic achievements at the top.

What does your statement have anything to with private university endowment ? If you believe everyone should bootstrap themselves with no help from the state, then shouldn't your reasoning be equally applicable to federal funding given to elite private universities? If they wish to control number of sets to a minimal number despite significant rise in population, then they can get their own funding too. No need to take the govt money.

Yes, endowed private universities should not be eligible for federal funding. It should be based on a per seat basis, with some scoring on how useful the seats generate employment with some lag to avoid flooding market with education seats that don't result in jobs (ie: what happened during the current student debt crisis where these colleges promising interesting jobs didn't deliver).

San Francisco's Academy of Art University is an example of incentives gone bad. Students can get debt, debt goes into pockets of university, student's get an education that is worth less than the debt.

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