Yeah, there are more ways around it. One can work part-time. But my experience is that this is all a bit mythologised and represents a kind of superhuman best-case scenario.

Admittedly, I'm biased as a native Russian (in US since early childhood). In our part of the world, making school and university-age children work is still often regarded as a kind of violation of their human rights. "They need to learn financial responsibility" doesn't resonate strongly in cultures without this national folklore of individual self-reliance.

However, as far as I can tell, "working through college" isn't as easy as it's made out to be. In the real world, a good chunk of the kids that have to work enough alongside school to actually _support_ themselves (housing, food, necessities), rather than just earn some discretionary "spending money", don't end up doing well in school, for obvious reasons of nonlinear tradeoffs in human activities. After a 6-hour shift on my feet at the pizza joint, I'm probably going to want to come home and veg, not soar to the snow-capped summits of my survey of Western intellectual history until 2 AM ...

Being in tech, I got so engrossed in my work I dropped out to pursue my (at the time) meteorically ascendant career! :-) But that's a different — and decidedly luxurious — problem.