It gets stranger with graduate school. I'm currently a PhD student. I quit a fairly lucrative trading career in 2010 and went back to school without any intent

It gets stranger with graduate school. I'm currently a PhD student. I quit a fairly lucrative trading career in 2010 and went back to school without any intention of doing a GRA (I was fine with self-funding; to be honest, I wanted to not have a boss for a while)... that lasted one semester. My adviser realized she liked the idea of paying 1/10 my old salary and getting an actual software engineer on her staff. I'm not one to complain or turn down money, so I took the gig and I'm near finished with the degree. Moral of the story #1: Go back to school for a PhD with a boat load of cash in your pocket, legitimate skills and solid work experience. You won't have to pay tuition. My wife and also decided to start a family during this time. We paid for her insurance out of pocket. Once the little guy came into the world, we started getting pamphlets in the mail from the state (aka the broke state of Illinois) regarding free programs (health insurance, food and formula vouchers) that we qualified for due to my lowly GRA salary (my wife is a stay-at-home mom). They don't care about or penalize high savings; these program managers just want to get as many qualified participants on the dole as possible to justify their existence. "Need" is not important; quotas are. Moral of the story #2: Quit producing taxable income, go back to school, breed like a rabbit. The state will provide. I realize this may sound harsh to those students currently getting by thanks to federal grants, but if you want to fix the problem, we need to get rid of these fucking programs. Prices will drop. All these loans accomplish is artificially inflating demand and putting graduates deep in debt. It'll be messy, sure, but the system is not sustainable in current form.