Post-Secondary: Right or Privilege

So in class today I accidentally got pulled into a debate about whether or not a post-secondary education was a right or a privilege. I simply asked what Mark Lipton meant when he said that Post-secondary was a right. Instead of a straight forward answer I cleared the way for a full on debate.
His arguments were that if you were not smart enough, did not have good enough grades, or could not afford, then you could not go to post-secondary, no questions asked. I understand why one would think this, but then wouldn't food and water be a privilege? Which is true I suppose. I should be gracious that I have the opportunity to work and vote. but still, those are just privileges that we fought for, but they could just as easily be taken away as they were given. If I can`t afford to feed myself then I suppose that being alive is a privilege. I thank my mother everyday. So, in those regards, do we have any real rights at all?
Mark said that 50 years ago the majority of the class would not be here, which is 100% true, because before there is no way in hell a girl would be going to post-secondary. But this is the year 2007, and my argument to that was thank God that we live in Canada. I believe that being a Canadian citizen has paved the way for Post Secondary to be a right, along with food and water, the option to vote. If I want to attend University, I will attend University, and I am. Canada has some amazing organizations that help people to help themselves. I'm not saying that these rights are handed over, gallivanting towards us on shining white horses, but if someone wants to go to University, now they can. They will have to work damn hard to get there, but if they really try, they will not be denied. Like getting the right to vote. Generations before us worked damn hard to make voting a right. But just like anything else, how easily could thats right be taken away?
Government funding helps those who wouldn't normally be able to attending post secondary, giving everyone a more equal playing ground. Now I've thought about this debate a lot. And I've came to the conclusion that perhaps the putting post secondary into the group of "rights" or "privileges" is not completely accurate. A privilege is a school teacher telling her students that their recess break is something they must earn. The teacher has all authority to keep each and every student in. But when all those noisy students work hard to be quite and encourage their peers to be quite, they gain back that right to go outside and play. Thats the beauty of how our privileges reflect rights, how the two are almost intertwined in Canada. Because democracy makes it so, we really cannot have one without the other. We have the right to freedom of speech, because we fought to not let that freedom to be taken away from us.
I may not be right. But I truly believe that everyone, in Canada at least, has been given the same advantages in achieving a post secondary education. Its how hard you work and how hard you fight that you can change a privilege a right.