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The following are mutually exclusive:

a) All children have equal opportunity.

b) Parents are able to spend money on their children.

I've spoken with many people who are in favor of both a) and b) and don't see the cognitive dissonance, but from this:

> like expensive tutoring aimed towards helping them pass exams, which is not available to many.

I guess you really favor a) over b). Unless your point was that exams should be selected to minimize the influence of last minute cram efforts which disproportionally benefit those with expensive tutors, in which case I might agree with you.

Excellent point. I certainly favour a) over b), but in the real world we need to appreciate there is a balance here. The aim should be to limit the effectiveness of parental help by giving 80% of the benefit to all children.

In regards to b), not all help is monetary in nature. Some of it can be in the form of social favours, familiarity of cultural norms (national, company and industry culture) and expectations etc.

1. Tutoring does not make a dumb person smart. Your IQ does not grow because you have a good teacher.

2. Complaining about people not having a fair chance in an age where everybody has access to the internet (which is pretty much all human knowledge) is just wrong.

3. You don't need college to rise to the top - that's just a myth (check out Thiel Fellowship website, they have lot's of materials on this topic).

4. The fact that you don't agree with someone doesn't mean they lack intelligence.

2. How many students aged 6-12 do you know that are willing to voluntarily spend time learning and studying? Zero?

Don't kid yourself. Just because knowledge and information is out there and accessible for free doesn't mean a child will have the ability and motivation to seek it out on their own. They're children, after all. What and how they learn will largely depend on parents and school.

3. You don't need a plane to get from New York to London. There are ships. You can even sail across the Atlantic! (there must be a fancy Latin term for this fallacy?)

Firstly, I hoped I made clear I didn't think the fact someone disagreed with me made them stupid.

Secondly, lots of people spend a lot of money on tutoring. I believe it helps people get significantly higher exam results, which then allows entry into significantly better universities. Do you disagree?

Making University education free won't solve the problem.

If Education was free, entrance exams would be much more difficult. Rich kids could still pass the exams, because their parents would pay for more tutoring/education.

India uses strict exam-based entrance exams. US doesn't. Admission criteria can be lotteries above minimum standards, or designed to choose the students who responded most to the level of investment they got (a bit harder to measure)

"except to remove situations where they currently have an (in my opinion) unfair advantage"

How would you do that?