My daughter is a great kid and an even better student. She has a somewhat an obsessive compulsive personality, she overdoes everything. If the report is finished at a page it takes her two pages to fill in the loose ends. She graduated from HS with a 4.0 average and was the captain for her hs bb and vb teams but struggles with relationships. Largely because she overthinks everything, perhaps she gets that from me, but the point is because she is so thorough it would have been difficult for her to hold a job and college at the same time. I knew she struggled with a social life so I paid so her education till she had a BS degree hopeing she would have one. She graduated with 3 BS degrees in 5 years but wanted to go to grad school, my sons wife has a degree that interested my daughter so she pursued a masters in the same field. At that point I said she would have to do it on her own which she did and has a job in that field and a responsible summer job. All this to say that through roughly 7 years of dedicated college life she has a significant student loan and no "night life" for lack of a better term. Paying off that student loan, paying rent, utility's and living in general there is nothing extra. Perhaps she should have chosen a different occupation but both her and my daughter in law are speech pathologists and make less than 50 with masters degrees. One in education and the other in medical. Its not as easy as some make it out to be, that doesn't excuse those that go to college for the social life and the money should be paid back if borrowed.

HOWEVER, society has devalued work ethic largely because everything is done with a computer today, its not like it used to be. When I didn't go to college I was offered a job doing work that no one would consider hiring someone without a college degree today. I made good money but hated everything about the job and went back to farming. I have sat on enough search committees that I know the prerequisite for most jobs comes with a degree requirement, candidates without a degree are discarded before even being looked at. There are so many applicants it has to be that way otherwise you could take far too long filling the position. Long way to say that society has made a college degree like a old hs degree only a heck of a lot spendyer. When my son went to college he had a scholarship for fb, I remember asking what a full ride was worth. The answer was $6500 per year 2 years later when my daughter started it was over 8 and by the time she finished grad school was about 8 per semester. Its not as easy as some of you all are making it out to be, I know I couldn't do it. I liked to have a good time when I was that age...