It always astonish me to think it can be seen as normal, even more equitable, to require people to get so huge debts before even being trained to work.
1. I waited until I was 24. This meant that my parents income did not affect my federal assistance so that I could get the maximum amount.
2. I went to a dirt cheap community college my first two years. It was so cheap that the federal grants covered my tuition, books, plus a little extra for living expenses.
3. I did really well at community college and was able to get a few scholarships at a bigger university.
4. In my state there is a block transfer program so that all of my credits at community college counted at the larger university.
5. I was able to live at home for the entire duration so I did not have to pay a huge sum for campus housing.
I was able to get a computer science degree from a state university with somewhere around $1000 in debt which I paid off entirely with my first paycheck.
I was only in $1000 in debt because I foolishly bought a $2400 gaming laptop.
> To meet the qualifying child test, your child must be younger than you and as of the end of the calendar year, either be younger than 19 years old or be a student and younger than 24 years old. There is no age limit on claiming your child as a dependent if the child meets the qualifying relative test.
http://www.irs.gov/Help-&-Resources/Tools-&-FAQs/FAQs-for-In...
Getting married has a similar effect, or at least it used to. You could get married, live with one or the other's well-off parents or otherwise be supported by them, but go to school for free or nearly so. Obviously, that's not for everyone :-)
While this might make financial sense at first, living in the dorms was one of (if not THE) best social experiences of my life, and in my opinion, worth the cost. I still have numerous friends and acquaintances I made via the dorms, going on 20 years later. In a few cases they have paid off socially and business-wise.
I would not recommend cutting out the singular "dorm experience" for the sake of saving a few bucks you can make back later anyway.
This would allow all deserving students a high quality, free education while limiting the amount of waste and degree inflation that would result from a completely free university system.
The kind of people who advocate for fairness for the poor and minorities are more likely to advocate for moves back toward that system rather than away from it.
California used to have a multitier system of tuition-free higher-education (two tiers of tuition-free public university, both selective but one moreso than the other, plus the community college system) along with private universities, so it worked somewhat like that, but that eroded over time.
So in essence, it's a system that's geared towards keeping the rich educated and the poor uneducated, by using a slight Catch-22.
Of course YMMV, and it often does, Brazil is huge and there are exceptions, but what I've laid out is what most commonly happens.
In the past few years though, the Government has built programs whose goal is to increase the amount of poor people who get educated, either by subsidizing the cost with tax money in private universities (Gasp! Socialism! :P) or by affirmative action with a quota system in public universities.
This brings about worries of its own, such as "Will people who are granted access to well-ranked Universities based primarily on their low income be able to actually follow through with the course?", for example, but overall the situation is an improvement.
Apart from that I feel much more comfortable going to a doctor, knowing that she has gained that position by skill and not because her parents could afford it.
Does that still sound good to you?
This holds for previous years as well.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg...
I think your interpretation was that I meant that the biggest percentage of the budget is spent on the military as compared to other government departments or military, which is not what I was trying to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...