Who the hell is "having eight kids?" Or is this just some hypothetical?
Is education a basic need? Probably. But you have to admit there is a terrible amount of diploma inflation out there - the need to have a piece of paper to prove you're somebody. It costs more to prove you're somebody these days than it used to, and you can't blame parents for inflating the value society puts on what is usually a pretty worthless peice of paper. To say they can't have 8 kids unless they can afford some some artificial pedigree is absurd. Government broke the education system, not the parents trying to provide a good start for their kids.
My thoughts exactly. There is so much diploma inflation today that Hertz Rent-A-Car hires only college graduates for their counter help. Yes, their counter help. You know, the person who helps you fill out the blank spaces in the form, runs your credit card, and says, Have A Nice Day. You need a $ 66,000 college education for that ? A person with a 10th grade education of 20 years ago would do that job just fine.
The only reason I don't like the tuition tax credit idea is that it implies that taxes for education were extracted already. I don't believe gradualism works at all. The only way to quit a bad habit is cold-turkey. The problem with gradualism is, the system still doesn't work, and you will get those on the left who will blame it on not enough government influence.