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January 15, 2007

What Do You Call A $40M School For 152 Girls?

Topics: Africa

Why does someone build a school to educate 152 girls that has 28 buildings, lying on 52 acres, and has the finest equipment, a laboratory, a theatre, and "is said to resemble a luxury hotel"?

For those of you without a calculator handy, that $40 million works out to over $260,000 per student! The class was selected from 3,500 applicants; $40,000,000 spread amongst that number would be over $11,000, which is comparable to US education costs, and thus, should be enough to provide a solid education for all of the applicants. According to the article, "Oprah said she decided to build her own school because she was tired of charity from a distance." Thus, the decision to only help a small number of lottery winners is, apparently, due to Oprah's close involvement.

As noted by The Gentle Cricket, "Anyone without an ego or image to worry about likely would have chosen to help a greater number of people. Yet, Oprah chose to be grandiose."

So, charity or ego? Any way you cut it, Oprah is either the dumbest human being on the planet, has more money than common sense, or cares more about a "show" than providing a quality education to as many girls as possible. We can only hope that the $40M covers the cost of operating the school for some period of time in the future.

Posted by Richard at January 15, 2007 6:55 AM

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