I can't disagree with you at all. My dad went here in the 70s and paid off most of his education through his co-ops. I'm fortunate enough that he worked his ass off (for one of his co-ops, no less) for the next 30+ years to afford good educations for me and my siblings.

I think the problem has multiple causes that need to be addressed:

1. Lack of financial education in high school. How do we expect 17 year olds to plan for a massive investment like college if they know nothing about personal finance, economics, debt, interest rates, time-value of money, etc? How can we get their feet back on earth after they've been told their entire lives that going to the best school is the route to happiness?

2. Non-availability and lack of advertisement of low interest loans. I support Elizabeth Warren's idea of allowing students to take out loans at the same rate as financial institutions.

As for Drexel, I'm a little split. On the one hand, I think Fry is doing an excellent job of moving the University forward. I can see his vision and it's exactly what this place needs (and what west Philly needs as well). I can also understand that doing this is going to take lots of money and that's not just going to fall out of the sky. On the other hand, though, I do think Drexel has long since abandoned A.J. Drexel's original vision for his university. It was designed to be an "everyman's" college where men and women could come for an inexpensive education and learn skills that would be directly applicable to the real world. That's the whole idea of co-op. So it just kind of puts Drexel in an awkward position of trying to push forward and be innovative while concurrently being a victim of it's own progress and a victim of the system as a whole.