Poverty And Higher Education

A college education can be a valuable asset in some contexts.  It might facilitate navigating certain career paths, and it might occasionally help someone truly learn information they may otherwise never have investigated.  What it never amounts to is an indicator of philosophical soundness, intelligence, or concern for truth itself, as opposed to a concern for learning as much about hearsay as possible.  A college degree therefore does not actually deserve intellectual respect by default because having a college degree is not identical to having true intelligence, much less philosophical initiative or self-obtained awareness of the most foundational aspects of reality.  Moreover, not all colleges and educational programs are equal as it is!

Not only is there no default threshold of quality for a college education, and not only is a person's education completely separate from their intelligence, but not everyone even has the same opportunities to go to college.  Some may not even be able to ever take a single class, much less complete all the requirements for a certain degree.  If college was a necessity for developing intelligence (which is logically impossible in the first place), financial and social factors would restrict many from ever becoming "rational"--not that memorizing and regurgitating random information from a professor's or textbook's hearsay makes someone intelligent, for intentionally pursuing reason itself is what does so.

What of the people who cannot attend college due to its expense or because of where they were born?  Are they doomed to some sort of intellectual inferiority because of circumstances they cannot necessarily control?  No, intelligence is not denied to them because of poverty or geography.  This is because of reason's universal accessibility to people regardless of their wealth, social status, geographical location, age, race, gender, or other physical characteristics.  The poor who cannot attend any university and the rich who can select any university they want have no advantage over each other where the ability to align with reason is concerned.

This is not the reason why education is distinct from and philosophically inferior to intelligence, but it is a ramification of confusing one for the other that many people might not think about unless they are confronted about it.  Poverty would likely doom someone to "unintelligence" if higher education and rationality were synonymous.  The latter is necessary to even appraise or grasp the former as it is, and yet even someone who grew up alone on a remote island must possess at least the minimal threshold of rationality if he or she is to understand anything at all.  Intelligence beyond the baseline amount needed to have understandable experiences of any sort is rare, but it is never developed by education, even at a prestigious university.

Whoever thinks that intelligence hinges on higher education, as if reason is not directly accessible, believes something from which it follows that an entire class of people are barred from any kind of thorough intelligence for economic reasons.  They may not have realized that this follows.  They may not like that it follows.  They may even refuse to acknowledge that it follows when pressed by others.  In spite of all of their ignorance or denial, they are disconnected from the ramifications of their own false idea.  Intelligence is wholly separate from any kind of education whether or not poverty is considered, but financial variables are relevant when those who conflate rationality and education talk about college.