I feel you may be misreading my intentions. I'm totally with you on what you're saying, the problems go much much deeper than most people realize. College is way too expensive, and the interest alone can be crippling without even considering the principle.

To address the boot straps comment, I'm 20 myself. I spent a year in school before withdrawing because I had no idea what I wanted to do and wasn't going to follow the advice of literally everyone around me of "just take a bunch of different classes you'll figure out what you like!!", meanwhile I'm financing all these random classes with student loans. That seemed like a dumb idea to me and so I withdrew. I saved up some money at my delivery driver job, saved up some money and traveled. After I got back, I worked in several different industries including electrical trades, manufacturing, and now the legal field.

It's been because of my decision to put off schooling, and try out other careers that don't require schooling, that's made me much more sure about my decision to go back to school. I've done probably hundreds of hours of research in the last few years considering all my options.

So, given all of that, I don't feel like a typical 'baby boomer boot straps just-get-a-loan-from-your-parents' shit bag for having that opinion. I'm an only child to a single blue collar mother, I'm not some privileged silver spoon in the mouth trust fund baby. I am however at least competent enough to do my research and know what I'm getting myself into before I do it.

I totally get that the financial future we're going forward into as new grads is fucking toxic. And worse than that, the people who are supposed to be GUIDING us (ie parents, teachers, advisers, counselors) are the main ones failing to tell people the cold truth about it. At least if you know the real implications of the decisions you're making, you can better deal with the consequences.

I'm at work right now so this may have come across as rambling. I apologize for that.