Like most economists say: It depend.. on the individual in this case Although I am not too familiar with the educational system in Europe, I can tell you that, here in America, there are gaps in our educational system. Students from economically disadvantaged background are less likely than those who are well-off. I am strongly adamant in my belief that one can be whatever he/she aspires to be if only his or her mindset is set to that. As a high school student going to a university wasn't even dubitable as far as I was concerned. Perhaps we were conditioned by society or our parents that it is always good to do things the old fashioned way. I can see myself picking up the princeton review and looking at the university rankings to see where I wanted to go. Finally when it came time to choose where I wanted to go I landed on a hometown school that was consistently ranked highly in the nation, but the pricetag that came with it was one a somali family or any middle class family couldn't bear for that matter(around 41gs a year). I could have easily turned the school down after looking at the pricetag, but something I realized a bit later on was that highly prestigious schools are in fact the ones that give the most aid to students. In fact in some cases, as in for example my case, they pay almost 100% of everything. On top of that I applied to several scholarships, some of them I won. I can tell you that you can practically find a scholarship for anything. My thoughts on shortcuts in life: It is true that we have a lot of what ifs when we look back on things but I don't regret anything I have done with respect to my education. I believe that as long as you are dedicated to whatever you do , be it an aprentaship or a university , things will workout. As for statistics: If you work hard at what you do, no one will deny you anything. Remember you make the school and not the other way around. I can't say take this road to all Somalis but whateva road you take be ready to give it 100%.

Great topic... Correlating the donation of money to relatives in our poverty stricken homeland to the Somali depencence on welfare in foreing countries is not a good idea. One because dependence from back home is based on necessity. Arguably one can say that this money is used for other means such as qaad and so on but this is often not the case. Afterall Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world. As for the dependency in foreign countries, there is a choice. The passive Somali problem plays a large role in those of us residing in foreign countries. For us to even put these in the same scale and analyze them one thing would have to take place. A true government must form and only then can we asses this matter in terms of whether its beneficial or not. Right now the "tough love" scenario is not a good idea at all.

Yo the face is a good way to keep in touch with friends. Holla at at your boy A.Hassan at Emory.