I see your point and get it entirely, though I do think you're generalizing an entire generation of people quite unfairly. Plenty of kids are still trying to work their way through college. It's because pell grants and other funding mechanisms were taken away quite intentionally, and student loan financing took over to prey on lower and middle class kids just trying to get some upwards mobility that education got so expensive. When I was financing my education 20 years ago - and doing work study, and working hard physical labor in the summers to pay for the bills, my private university cost ~$35k a year. It was crushing. Now it's twice that because for two decades we've not made lower and middle class education a priority. This is retroactively righting the wrong, anf I support it.