<p>Guys, I got rejected by Stanford EA so I obviously have no love of that school. My post was not meant to be a praise of Stanford and Harvard, but rather a denunciation of their inability to educate the people who aren't already smart and don't even need an eduation. </p>
<p>By the same token, you cannot deny that public universities strive to have the same prestige and reknown as Stanford and Harvard. Of course they do. Just look at the Berkeley forums and see how much they see themselves as being "on par with HYPSM." They even go so far as to snub their noses at fantastic schools like Columbia, Caltech, Duke, Dartmouth, Cornell, UPenn and other "lower ivies." There's no question in my mind that public schools try to compete with the top schools just as much as private schools do. </p>
<p>And in the end, my question is why do we use taxpayer money to fund schools that just try to be like the top private schools anyways?! Why should I pay money to the government just so they can create a public version of a Stanford-wannabe. The private schools already occupy the prestigious-university niche so our taxpayer dollars would be better spent on the educational niche that is completely neglected by the private sectors--community colleges. In my opinion, prestigious universities only help to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They educate mainly the wealthy class who aced high school and are already smart enough to succeed. In fact, there have been studies where a person who is accepted to Harvard but chooses to go to a less-known school or no school at all earns the same amount of money as a person who graduates from Harvard. Therefore, it is questionable whether these prestigious universities actually educate people or if they just accept smart people who will do well regardless of where they go. </p>
<p>But community colleges offer second chances for high school dropouts and people who NEED an education. They actually improve people more than any prestigious university. That's where our taxpayer dollars need to be spent.</p>