"Do you know how many Americans have worked to put themselves through college without parental support?"

I was one of them. No parental money; they just didn't have it.

"Maybe, just maybe, little Johnny and Susie are going to have to get sunmmer jobs in their junior and senior years of high school to help pay for their college expenses, like books, lab fees, car insurance, etc. And maybe they should be expected to have summer jobs while they are in college too."

All through high school and college I worked as many hours as I could. 40+ in the summer and during vacations, 30-35 during the school year while carrying 5 courses. Spring break? What's that?

Didn't need car insurance because I had no car. Lived off-campus to save money. Had a partial scholarship and low-interest loans and it was still a struggle all the way.

I went to a big Ivy League school. I made it through mostly because I was too dumb to foresee how out-of-my-league it was, and too stubborn to give up.

But that was a long time ago.

You forgot one thing: It's a different game today, by about an order of magnitude.

1972, tuition was $3000 (just tuition - for the whole year!) 1976, tuition was $4500. Look up the minimum wage back then and you'll see a student working for minimum wage or somewhat more could make a big dent in tuition working 1000-2000 hours per year.

Today the same school wants more than ten times what they charged me - probably about 12 times the 1972 price. But the minimum wage now isn't 12 times what it was then. Scholarships haven't increased at that rate either. The low-interest long-payback student loans of those times aren't the same today either.

Most of all, the job the typical graduate can get doesn't pay 12 times what it did in 1976.

"A wise person once told me: "You can have it all...just not all at the same time.""

That person was flat-out wrong. Some folks can have it all - others can't. Some things are mutually exclusive.

In the bad old days 40-50 years ago a highschool graduate with some smarts could get a decent job that would pay enough to support a middle class family on a single income. A college education meant upward mobility.

Millions of middleclass Americans back then had their kids in their 20s, raised them in their 30s and 40s, and saw them grown, educated and gone by their early 50s. Between Social Security, Medicare, a company pension and a house that had been paid off for a long time, they could retire in their 60s.

Now it takes at least a college degree and often two incomes to get what a single highschool diploma used to. Now it's common to delay having kids until the 30s, raising them in the 40s and 50s. By the 60s they're still not fully educated and gone. Social Security and Medicare keep shrinking, company pensions are a museum piece and the house won't be paid off for a long time.

And folks are supposed to fund their own retirements.

"Rent some movies this weekend. Take your kids on some vacations while they are young. Then tell them they have to work to go to college. It's the American way."

Not really. While kids should work and save for the future, the numbers aren't what they were 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. College costs have risen faster than inflation, while resources have lagged behind.

Unless you live in a state like California, with its strong state university system, college is big bucks today.

Tell me how the current-day version of myself is supposed to work their way through an Ivy League school the way I did, on the kinds of jobs a student can get, without massive help from somewhere. I had a partial tuition scholarship and it was still a struggle from the first day to the last.

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The BIG question is:

Why is college so expensive? Colleges are nonprofits, so they get all kinds of tax breaks. Their school year is shorter than high school and they have endowments, endorsements and all sorts of fundraising sources. The actual class hours are less than in high school, the class sizes are usually larger and many classes are taught by low-paid TAs and associates.

So why does college cost so much? Where does all the money go?

writes: "Our society trains women to put others first, to meet the needs of their husband and children before taking care of themselves. There's some vague idea that one day someone will notice all they've done. Appreciation never happens, of course, because why appreciate someone who seems perfectly content to allow others to walk all over her? A woman must respect herself enough to demand fairness in a relationship or she'll get treated like garbage (and heartily deserve it)."

If that's true, our society trains men exactly the same way. An ideal modern husband is successful (meaning he makes a lot of money and gets a lot of respect in his job) but at the same time treats his bride as an equal in all things and has time/energy/resources to be a good partner and a good dad. He takes care of everyone else first and himself last.

But perhaps it's not true. How many stay-at-home dads are there, compared to stay-at-home moms? How many big family decisions (what house to buy, how to furnish/decorate it, what car(s) to drive, what vacations to take, etc.) are primarily decided by each person? (Yes, I left out "how many kids to have" because Mom has to actually have them).

IOW, who decides what "fairness" really is?