If you want an education MOOCs, old textbooks and MIT OCW are cheap or free. If you want a degree that costs money because people want their stamped certificate of membership of the bourgeoisie.

Your talking to someone who has done very well for himself without a degree, not by choice. I couldn't afford community college in my day because I was unwilling to take on debt, while working 40 hours a week and living at home.

I don't believe that is a fair way to treat students though. You shouldn't have to get in debt up to your eyeballs to compete in the job market.

I was lucky I was naturally inquisitive and interested in learning all I could. Not everyone is though, and that's alright. If they learn better in a structured environment, I don't think that should preclude them from being educated.

The average Bachelor’s graduate in the US has $30,000 in debt on graduation, the price of a new car. That just isn’t that expensive for the magic piece of paper that gets you past HR. If you didn’t want to go into debt that’s fine but if you have a credible chance of graduating $30,000 over the course of a working life is not bad.

If you want a degree you can actually get a regionally accredited US one way cheaper, from Western Governors’ University or go even cheaper and munchkin transfer credit requirements and credit by examination like the people at https://www.degreeforum.net/

Or you can do like I did and fart about for years and go straight to getting a Master’s in Finance for ~£10,000 from CEFIMS by starting off studying Master’s modules as individual professional awards or in Software Engineering from Oxford more or less the same way.

https://www.cefims.ac.uk/programmes/ipa/

http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/study/apply.html

> Admission criteria Applications are invited from anyone with sufficient experience or proven ability in software, security, or data engineering. An appreciation of the challenges and practices facing professionals in the field is expected, together with an appropriate level of logical, mathematical, or analytical skills. A typical applicant will have at least two years' experience in a professional environment, and an undergraduate degree in a related subject. However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications

> unwilling to take on debt, while working 40 hours a week and living at home.

Does community college cost that much now?

I went to community college, lived at home and worked less than 40 hours a week without debt. I just checked and they charge about $800 per semester to county residents, which sounds even less than what I paid.

People find ways to say that about a lot of things, from housing to first-run movies. You'll have to do better than simple assertion to defend the claim that cash assistance for college should be universalized rather than means-tested.