The Rise of Scholar Inequality
All throughout history, there have been trends and events which have caused problems in societies. There have been ongoing occurrences that have been nearly impossible to bring to an end such as wars or natural disasters. On the other hand, there have also been things that have come and gone such as many diseases that are now extinct. Something I am going to talk about in this blog post is something that has made its way in and out of history. It has constantly altered itself, yet has never actually gone away. This is the concept of inequality.
Inequality can be defined as an unfair situation in which some people have more rights or better opportunities than other people. It is amazing how something so simple has caused so many issues in so many different forms. Throughout time, there have been problems with racial, social, and gender inequality among many others. In the United States, as some of these inequalities, such as gender and racial, have dispersed over the years, others such as social inequality have continued to grow. Discussing the solution to these inequalities could bring up heated debates where solutions would be endless. But I am not here to discuss these common and traditional forms of inequality. Instead, I want to bring a form of inequality that has never caused many issues in the past. The issue of scholar inequality.
Ever since the creation of the Internet, access to information has exponentially sky rocketed for people who are able to get online. The Internet was an invention that would open so many minds. People could access the information of others from across the world. When it came down to scholarly articles, it seemed that scholars would be able to connect with the rest of the world by posting their ideas online for others to review. In the present day world, this is not the case. Many scholars and scientists give their ideas to corporations who then charge others huge amounts of money in order to access this information. Universities and other organizations will then make these extremely high payments in order to get access to these ideas and maintain their reputation as a high level organization. Although, it is great that the people who are apart of these organizations are getting access to these scholarly articles, what about the others? Why should they be deprived of information when they cannot afford to join these expensive Universities. By depriving them of access to knowledge, you are depriving so much of the population of opportunity and hope to become educated. You are essentially saying that the only way to be intelligent is to have the money to get there. If you are not born in a situation where you will be able to join these organizations, you should just give up.
In my opinion, this is the wrong message to send our country. If there truly is an “American Dream” and our constitution is true to its belief that everyone should be given the opportunity to a “pursuit of happiness”, then how is it right to deprive such a large percentage of the population from access to these archives. Even with hard work and determination, one cannot reach the level of others if they do not have the proper resources. If this country wants to keep its image, it must bring an end to this scholar inequality and give everyone equal access to these articles.
