[exodus_de]

> In your view of the world, people like me essentially wouldn’t have access to opportunity that would be reserved for the wealthy folks.

That is just not true. Historically, working your way through college was completely feasible. It still is feasible, unless you need one of those fancy 50,000$-100,000$ degrees, in which case you need a loan.

In Germany, a lot of students are working and living modestly through college. You don't have to rush your degree, employers do value actual work experience.

> You shouldn’t have to care about me individually, but if there are enough people like me, it takes a huge toll on society. You won’t be able to hide from it.

Look at it this way: In society, not everybody can or needs to be an academic. If you're not willing to work your way through college, or get a loan, or get one of these ISAs, then society isn't worse off if your place is taken by someone else.

Just look at the situation right now, there are tons of Americans with advanced degrees that are bartending and they're deeply in debt. Clearly society didn't need them to get that education, so it's better off not having paid for it.

[SeanAppleby]

$50000 is not a fancy degree, that's just about the floor for an in-state public school without even accounting for cost of living.

>If you're not willing to work your way through college, or get a loan, or get one of these ISAs, then society isn't worse off if your place is taken by someone else.

It absolutely could be. People are not interchangeable pieces. Our society is built on the achievements of improbable people doing improbable things. You need only imagine a world where Einstein was born on a struggling farm without the resources or encouragement to prosper to understand the problem.

At some level it's a statistical game of trying to distribute opportunity to get the relatively few outliers into position for us to reap the rewards of their output. If you narrow the funnel you minimize the probability of great intellectual work getting done to help steer society, which holds all of society back.

And if you don't understand how it could be infeasible to be able to pay your way through $50k on top of living expenses before starting your career, or how it could be unbearably risky to take on $50k+living expenses in debt as a 20y/o, even if you expect to exit that pipeline with good career prospects, you really need to explore outside of your bubble.

[tracer4201]

That’s exactly what I did. It took me a long time and various jobs on the side along with serious will power to graduate with a degree in computer science and mechanical engineering.

My first semester, I took pre calculus instead of calculus 1 because my high school didn’t offer anything higher than trig, and growing up in poverty and going through and underfunded school district were the main reasons. My second semester I was in a data structures course and my professor was confused when I asked him to tell me what the sigma symbol was because I had never seen summations before.

I would like to assume people post generally on this forum in good faith, but your comment is incredibly ignorant and out of touch with reality. The wealthy send their kids to preschool. On the other hand, those of us who go through a regular K-12 system in middle America don’t have the proper prerequisites to succeed in college. We aren’t taught about finance, credit, the economy, investing, etc. Math and STEM education in general takes a back seat. Taking loans for college can be pointless unless you’re 100% motivated to learn not just what your college courses offer but the prior knowledge you need to wrap your head around the concepts.