Yeah, there are more ways around it. One can work part-time. But my experience is that this is all a bit mythologised and represents a kind of superhuman best-case scenario.

Admittedly, I'm biased as a native Russian (in US since early childhood). In our part of the world, making school and university-age children work is still often regarded as a kind of violation of their human rights. "They need to learn financial responsibility" doesn't resonate strongly in cultures without this national folklore of individual self-reliance.

However, as far as I can tell, "working through college" isn't as easy as it's made out to be. In the real world, a good chunk of the kids that have to work enough alongside school to actually _support_ themselves (housing, food, necessities), rather than just earn some discretionary "spending money", don't end up doing well in school, for obvious reasons of nonlinear tradeoffs in human activities. After a 6-hour shift on my feet at the pizza joint, I'm probably going to want to come home and veg, not soar to the snow-capped summits of my survey of Western intellectual history until 2 AM ...

Being in tech, I got so engrossed in my work I dropped out to pursue my (at the time) meteorically ascendant career! :-) But that's a different — and decidedly luxurious — problem.

> All First Year students are required to live in on-Grounds

http://housing.vt.edu/contracts/apply/first_year_students.ht...

> All incoming first-year students are guaranteed, and required to live in, on-campus housing for their first year;

And that's just Virginia.

http://www.uno.edu/housing/residency-requirement.aspx

Other schools in system have a similar policy.

Do we know what lead to this policy becoming commonplace?

I'm not claiming that students should live on campus, but there are clear advantages if they do so to both those students and other on-campus students.

Practically, it's more likely just a revenue measure...