College is a Scam

I am so god damn sick of hearing about how it's so hard to get into college.  It's not hard.  Graduate high school, and you can go to almost any (local) state college.  The problem is not GETTING INTO college - it's PAYING FOR college.  Rich people can pay for it - poor people can't.  That's what we read every, single day in the newspaper.  But that ridiculously simplistic sentence I just typed doesn't encompass the people like myself who aren't rich and aren't poor.  We live paycheck to paycheck, hoping shit doesn't go off the rails in some way, because if it does ... we're fucked.  If I didn't get a paycheck next month, I'd lose my house, my car, get reported to credit agencies for outstanding debt, and not be able to feed my family, yet I'm considered solvent (according to the FAFSA).

One month.

But somehow, I don't qualify for student financial aid.  According to the federal government, I can pay for all my children's tuition, because I make X-amount of dollars per year.  Ignore the fact that my family is still reeling in debt from a failed business three years ago.  Ignore the fact that my son blew out his knee and cost me upwards of $10,000 in medical bills.  Fucking ridiculous.  What happened to admitting students and offering scholarships based on their academic record rather than how much money a university can extort from parents?!

I'm still paying my own college loans, and now I'm on the hook for the Parent Plus loans from the first child who graduated college, and next year, I'll have another one entering college.  If the American Dream is to go to college and better yourself, why is the struggling middle class getting fucked all the time in favor of other demographic groups?  I'm just trying to keep it together and pay the bills.  So I am punished, because I'm not poor enough.

Why are people on public assistance?  Because it's more convenient that working a 60-hour week, nose to the grindstone every day, just so you can (maybe) go into life-long debt to pay for your children to ... dig the same financial hole for themselves.  What a dream.  Makes me want to take out a loan for $50,000 and just hand the money to my son.  Tell him to blow it however he wants.  He'd probably end up equally successful after four years.