yet another current event: affect of our economy on college

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/giving/11SCHOOL.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This article talks about the affects our economic slow-down is having on education. When the stock market was thriving, private secondary schools and colleges were also thriving. Colleges were attracting more students because they were able to help them financially, they were growing and expanding, and attracting better faculty. With the economic problems we have been going through, colleges are cutting spending, not helping their students financially as much as they were before, holding off hiring new professors, and also holding off projects. A big reason for this is more and more families having smaller incomes, and less donations to the schools from outside sources. Some schools are looking for programs and other things that they can cut in order to save money and still be able to help out their students, but most suspect they are going to have to start addressing their enrollment policies to include more people who can actually pay for college without getting help from the school. This poses a problem for people from families with lower incomes, but it's almost the only way to keep the college itself from going bankrupt.

I can understand how the schools probably have to look out for themselves before the people they enroll so they don't go bankrupt, but I think it's terrible that now some schools might start accepting people more for their money than their intelligence or will to succeed. It isn't really a student's fault if they can't pay for all of their college and I think some schools recognize that fact, but don't know how to handle the situation they've been put in. Hopefully our economy will go back to the way it was so everyone has a fair shot at going to school, because uneducated people will probably only make this economic situation worse.