I never said "free". But I do believe that the pathway to universities/colleges should be made easier. That doesn't have to mean free. Heck they could even keep the prices that they are charging now. In most cases it is the payments that make going prohibitive. Especially when you pay 500-1000 dollars in rent. Pay electric bill, phone bill etc etc. You might think that it's easy to get $7.5k but reality shows that this is not so for those that make minimum wage and try to provide for a family.
And they're going to have to make every one of those other payments regardless of whether they attend college or not.
Look at it this way: Even if the person only makes barely enough money to survive, they can take out
the entire cost of their tuition in guaranteed federal loans. How is the up front cost preventing them from doing anything?
I'm not even going to get into the children issue, because that doesn't change anything - they should be supporting them anyways. If they can't, then tough **** - you don't have the "right" to start making kids at 17, not work, and then expect someone else to pay for your kids and college. For those that are motivated, they can overcome this.
Why not? You try to make it sound like all you need is motivation to attend college. There are many things that prevent even those that are motivated from getting a loan to attend college...or saving up money to do so.
Like what? Again, they don't even need to save up - they can take it all out in loans.
Your first 13 years of public education (K-12) is completely free, with the $110,000 price tag being picked up by the government. After that, it's heavily subsidized should you choose to attend a state school. I think that's plenty generous.
Condoms are only about $50 piece. No big deal unless you live in a state like Texas which teaches 'abstinence only' education in HS (and consequently, has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the US, along with the highest HS dropout rate).
And if you attend college, the condoms are free. More savings!
What I meant is that, for a lot students it can be more affordable just to work full time right out of HS because of sky-high college admissions, than it would be to work full time at McDonald's.
The fact that it might seem more affordable up front doesn't mean that it's not an absolutely idiotic decision.
Again, if a kid is too stupid to compare average salaries for a HS grad and a college grad and realize that he might be better served by biting the bullet and taking out some loans and forgoing salary for a few years, then that kid should not be attending college anyways.