"There are plenty of ways of going to college without assuming a lifetime of debt. But no one is going to bring you a bunch of money. It's up to you to find it.

"There are plenty of ways of going to college without assuming a lifetime of debt. But no one is going to bring you a bunch of money. It's up to you to find it." I am, currently, going to college. I have quite a bit of debt ($8K) and expect to get about double that by the time I'm finished. If you can show me a way to pay for college without debt, and I actually get the money, I will pay you $25 for every $100 I receive. So, if you can show me a way to get $200,000 for college (which I would have to come up with, somehow, if I weren't fortunate enough to get some scholarship money), you would get $50,000. If you can show me a way to get $20,000 to pay off my current and future debt, you'll get $5,000. I can predict in advance, with fairly high probability (although I would obviously be delighted to be proven wrong), that you won't be able to come up with any way for me to get that sort of money, even given that you probably have more experience than I do, and even given an immediate large financial incentive. The reason why is obvious: $200,000, or even $20,000, is a crapton of money, especially when you're young, have no to little experience and are working hard as a full-time student. Most adults- people who have had full-time jobs for ten or twenty or thirty years- pay for items that cost that much on credit, because they can't afford it otherwise, even though they get socked with finance charges when they borrow.