With regard to your post 20, do you think that your friend had the intellectual competency to handle a curriculum in engineering, mathematics, computer science, or accounting?
So many Freepers assume that anyone can do whatever they want to do. It’s rather like the old joke, “If I had the mind to, I could write like Shakespeare.”
I would add that you subscribe to this belief; you said as such in your post. It's just not true, sir. Hell, I would have loved to have been a major league baseball player. But that requires a talent. Academic ability is no different.
He seemed like a reasonably intelligent person certainly he could have done whatever was necessary to get through the required coursework. Yeah he would actually have to study...but so did I.
Now would he have been a good engineer etc. That’s open to debate. Everyone performs to their gifts/abilities but this kid was not with an IQ below 100.
Not everyone is college material necessarily, but with some of the schlock degrees they issue these days you could give a degree to a potted plant.