>>The truth is that the feds have created such a mess with regards their role in jacking up tuition....and their role in increasing health costs.....that students (and their parents) have had their lives so badly complicated to the point that the scenario mentioned in the letter is either quite rare or indeed a fabrication.

I agree it's difficult to give too much credence to provocative claims from masked posters. Just as we shouldn't be too bothered by what anybody says in an online forum.

In any case, surely the big story is that the US tertiary education system is a sign of the class structure the US now enjoys. Clearly there's 3 approximate class tiers: the aristocracy who cruise into and through Ivy League with a new car from mummy and no personal debt, the decent Middle Class who makes sacrifices to send kids to State University or wangles them into Ivy League by various schemes including merit some of the time, and the untouchables who have no hope for a degree unless a pharaoh or scholarship fund decides to do an Eliza Doolittle. Occasionally- very occasionally- a chimney sweep makes it into the upper echelons, but that's not the norm. And there are some qualifications- like medicine- that cut across most class barriers. Also not the norm but I'm privileged to be an observer and I've been at dinner parties where US physicians had some very uncomfortable things to say to the upper echelons who never will meet a street urchin but seem to know all about it, including the fact that if there's no bread then they should get off their backsides and eat cake. After which the culprit physician isn't invited again. IOW it's reaching the point of no return.

Meanwhile in the hunkered down middle class there's a growing expectation for tertiary qualification in most management and middle class posts these days, with even a MBA regarded as a scrap of paper compared to a proper degree. This has been true forever in many disciplines like law, but also it's true in IT and most other fields that provided a comfortable living for many here whether they have a university qualification or not. IOW the good old days are gone in more than one respect.