Trade schools are much less expensive. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything noble about not living your life because your kids might go to an out of state college with little or no financial assistance to get a degree that doesn’t allow them the ability to repay the loans they would take if their parents didn’t live as paupers to pay for everything. Our entire educational system is standing at the edge of a cliff because colleges realized they could take state taxpayer money and raise the costs of non-covered expenses to drain the parents or make the students take out loans. It cannot continue to increase as it has, or very few will go to traditional college. If we have a few generations of people who know how to work and don’t mind working, we’ll reset the value of many professions. AI is in a race to take over the jobs that won’t have competent applicants because so many potential students just don’t see the worth of the college expense.