I'm a counter-example to that. My parents paid full-price tuition for me 4 years of university (CMU class of 2010) and 4 years of private high school (which has

I'm a counter-example to that. My parents paid full-price tuition for me 4 years of university (CMU class of 2010) and 4 years of private high school (which has the same "need blind" admission policy). But, they were not millionaires, rather they had just enough saved. My mother is a "family doctor" in a small town, and my father was a stay-at-home dad, total pre-tax income around $120k-$150k at the time. House was around $250k, still paying the mortgage while I was in school. We actually knew of families that made more, and paid less, at the same schools. I have one younger sister, in her last couple of years at university she did finally get financial aid - the system/calculations did result in my parents paying off their mortgage but having zero savings left at the end. A couple years later I had some software engineer money, and helped my father buy a car when his old one broke down. We're all doing fine, we understood the system, we made good lives for ourselves, my parents do have retirement savings, I'm not complaining about that. But this narrative you push here, about only millionaires and billionaires paying the absurd sticker price for university so it's fine, it's wrong. The statistics don't make it right. Even though "the average american" lives paycheck to paycheck regardless of income level (even at our middle to upper-middle level of income), that doesn't make this system fair to the hard-working and fiscally responsible people out there. There were some big family fights each year when it was time to fill out the FAFSA like all the other middle-class families, my dad hated it, it was such a charade and a waste of time.