“As though the daughter could not have attended Junior college or gone part time and worked.”
Or, heaven forbid, taken out a loan. The average college grad earns $1.3 million more in lifetime earnings than a high school grad. http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/a/edandearnings.htm In families with limited resources, there’s no good reason for kids not to be self-financing their own higher education costs. And if she planned to work a career that wouldn’t confer her an income advantage over simply graduating from HS, she has no business squandering scarce resources on college in the first place. College is an INVESTMENT, not an entitlement to 4 years of goofing off.
My family had seven sons and I was the oldest so there was no money from my mom and dad who were doing all they could to keep their heads above water. They certainly could not pay anything toward the Big money school I had been admitted to.
So I worked just about every kind of job there was, took out loans and got some scholarship money; went to junior colleges and took off plenty of time to chase girls and have a good time. Eventually I caught one and realized that I had to get serious if I wanted to keep her or one like her. So I got a couple of degrees, lost the girl and caught another at least as appealing, married her and lived happily ever after. More or less.