What if the cure for cancer is trapped inside the mind of someone who cannot afford education?

What if the cure for cancer is trapped inside the mind of someone who cannot afford education? This simple question poses a problem that I think is one of the major shortcomings of the education system in the United States. When education is such an expense as it is in the US, how many brilliant people are denied an education simply because their parents did not have the purchase power to do so? Not to mention that one of the recruitment techniques of the US army is to say that "with the money you'll make, you can afford to go to college". Kids wind up dead in Afghanistan and Iraq because conservatives make education in this country an incredible expense.

The point here is that we live in society, and the whole of society reaps the benefits of educating its population. Add to it the fact that education is a human right. The logical conclusion is that it is both undesirable and unethical to turn it into a for-profit enterprise.

Saying that we can solve the problem with merit-based scholarships touches the difficult issue of where to start recognizing one's merit. Should we have merit-based scholarships in Kindergarten? Elementary school? High school? Undergrad? Grad school? None of these works since most ways of measuring merit are entangled with economic power. Those whose parents could afford a better education have an obvious advantage. There is no way out of it that does not involve making education tax-funded and free for all. Even making education "affordable" by making it subsidized yet charging a symbolic amount - as done in Canada - does not solve the problem that there will always be people who cannot afford even a low tuition.

 So, the solution I see is to give free education and equal opportunity to all. Place the merit after education is over. That is, instead of merit-based scholarships, merit-based research grants.