Regarding the July 2 article "Single moms fight for kids' futures": This is an important issue and many congratulations for printing it. In my own experience as a professor at Nagasaki University, many students in the evening part-time courses have saved up for 15 to 20 years to finance their university education; after passing their examination as a high school senior, they were unable to come to the university due to their financial inability. They are some of the most brilliant students I have encountered. Thus, every year Japan is losing huge number of potential scholars, scientists and intellectuals because of high tuition fees charged by the universities.
Public universities in European countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, do not charge tuition fees. America's state universities and British universities charge only nominal fees. In Japan, however, annual tuition fees are about $10,000 at the public universities and $30,000 at the private universities. This is prohibitive not only for single parents but also for families with more than one teenage child. Japan is a very rich developed country. It can certainly afford to follow the European countries and abolish tuition fees altogether in higher education.