>>I believe that. In today's day and age of the younger generation being groomed to take the easy way and government handouts without thinking of the repercussions of pay back well into the future, that most would take the tuition assistance rather than working their asses off. You don't have time to party if you're working 1 or more part time jobs to pay for the tuition.

But consider the stat that after correcting for inflation, in 2013 you needed to work 5 hours for every one hour you had to work in 1979 to pay for tuition. If you worked 10 hours then, today it's 50. If you worked 20, today it is 100. The question may not be whether you have time to party, but whether you have time to study! So unless students have wealthy parents, loans and financial aid may not be options, they may be absolute requirements.

I agree that loans feel like easy money and it's easy to dip into the loan bucket and to party rather than grafting, but is that entirely a story about the modern student? If they realistically still only had to work an average of 4 hours per week to pay for full-time tuition, maybe more students would get it done without loans. Because once you have a loan, then just as with credit card debt it's painless to rack up another $1000 as finals approach so you can have a few beers with buddies on Friday rather than working evening shifts and staying up until 4am to get the essays done.

Ironically, loans were a far better financial choice in your day. Had you known the inflationary future, your smart financial move would have been to borrow to the hilt and then watch inflation erode the debt down to the price of a TV. Current students don't get to enjoy that- yet.