Oh, I know plenty of people without health problems who can't afford it either. Your parents have complete control over your access to college until age 24. If

Oh, I know plenty of people without health problems who can't afford it either. Your parents have complete control over your access to college until age 24. If they refuse to sign the FAFSA, or refuse to cosign private loans, you are 100% screwed in most states. >It's going to mean loans. Well, no shit. >It is not that much more expensive. It is when gas is $4/gallon instead of $2/gallon, and the economy makes it much harder to find a job of any kind. Not to mention tuition itself is increasing at about twice the rate of general inflation. " On average, tuition tends to increase about 8% per year. An 8% college inflation rate means that the cost of college doubles every nine years." http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml >You'd hypothetically already be paying the rest with the 7k / year job that's keeping you kicking. Hypothetically, sure. In reality, if you don't have 7 days a week of 24/7 availability, you can't get a job in many places. Most of these low end jobs will have you coming in at 7AM one monday, and closing at 11PM the next. You can't plan your courses around work since there's no regularity. In the best case scenario, you have a job already and try to change availability, but in that case they'll often slash your hours to barely nothing. Can YOU live on 12 hours a week of minimum wage? > 6k in other loans a year to fill it in at today's cost >4 years of loans, even if they're shitty, "credit ready" loans at personal loan rates, still only leaves a fictional Ohio traditional student with $45k in student loan debt at the end of the degree You cannot get these without a cosigner or guarantor. When I was 18, I tried banks, sallie mae, online options, etc for (roughly) this amount and was completely denied. Hell, I couldn't even get a credit card for any amount, even through my bank. Even when I later had a better fulltime job making 20K/year, I was again declined for loans. (At that time, I had 3 credit cards and awesome credit.) >In any STEM discipline, paid internships and co-ops are also possible, which would further reduce the loan load required. You have to have access to loans in the first place to get there. >But I'm sorry, not having parents foot the bill generally isn't yet a barrier to a high-quality education. Oh, I see what the problem is. You don't live in reality. I'm talking about people who live in the US, FWIW.