Thanks for sharing the anecdotes.

Doesn't it seem like a society shouldn't encourage people to financially self-immolate in order to start their adult life?

I mean, giving the self-immolators some tweaky hacks to prevent being lit on fire is not really the best solution.

I totally agree, I think most level-headed people do.

It's a tricky problem. We want people to have equal opportunity to pursue college, even if their parents can't afford it. But at the same time, we don't want to subsidize cost creep.

Clearly the current solution doesn't work. Alas, we're deeply invested in it (literally), and each passing year the entanglement grows.

I think you can make a strong case for govt-funded tuition at public universities. But I don't know how to get to there from here without making a handful of people very unhappy.

> I think they had to be on disability for a certain period of time (measured in years, iirc) before they were discharged.

In other words, basically borderline poverty for years before people realized it was never going to happen, and got lucky enough to get out of disability -- cuz a lot of people don't.