Higher education is failing. Enter the Internet to save the day!

The cost of higher education around the world is simply too high to have a positive impact on our children’s futures. Sarah Lawrence College in New York tops the list of the world’s most expensive institutions, coming in at a mind-boggling $61,236. That’s $45,900 for basic tuition, $14,312 for room and board, and another $1,024 in miscellaneous fees.

Seriously – who can afford to pay that for a four-year degree in an economy where no job is guaranteed? Are we really willing to burden the next generation with an insurmountable debt?

In Mexico, higher education costs range from $11,777 to a mere $527. In Japan, the average student pays $11,865. Only 33% of Australian families can afford to send their children to college, while in countries like England and Wales, that number drops to around 21%.

That’s only addressing the developed world. In places like Afghanistan, Honduras, and Somalia, higher education is the last thing on the agenda. These countries are busy fighting wars on numerous fronts – against disease, poverty, and tyranny, to name a few.

So do we give up and leave these developing countries to educate themselves? Over two-dozen prestigious universities in the U.S. and abroad say, “No.”

Brown, Columbia, Emory, Vanderbilt and Wesleyan now offer free courses online, joining the likes of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Berklee College of Music, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of British Columbia, University of London, University of Melbourne, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The internet is reshaping the way the world views education. Coursera, an online platform that features some 200 courses from 33 institutions, has drawn over a million students across the globe. Another site called EdX was founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to allow absolutely ANYONE with an internet connection to complete independent certification programs.

Still, we have to remember that not everyone in the world has access to regular electricity, let alone an internet connection. That brings us back to our original question:  do we just give up and move on?

NRGLab doesn’t believe quitting is ever an option. We’ve dedicated ourselves to developing a clean, cost-efficient system of power generation with the aim of bringing electricity to the third world.

Because electricity is the seed from which all modern innovation flourishes. With an SH-Box generator in every home, on every island, across the driest deserts and wettest wetlands, not only can we can give people the security of energy independence, we can give them an opportunity to better themselves through education.

Not everything has to cost an arm and a leg in such uncertain economic times. See how affordable an SH-Box can be by visiting nrglab.asia and learning when we’ll be holding our next auction.