Comment by sokoloff

If you want to support your child at university in the UK, there's a particular band of middle-class income where you get the worst of both worlds. You make too much to get certain kinds of government support, but you don't make enough that you can comfortably make up the difference.

If you want to put multiple children through uni then it can get very burdensome.

One of many ways in which our system is regressive.

You’d be surprised - parents of an entire generation basically paid for their entire schooling with a part time job. They pay less on their mortgage for a 3 bedroom house than a studio apartment.

In their mind, they made it on their own, and their entire parenting strategy was to teach the lessons of how they made it to their kids.

This is incredibly common with conservatives.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US (20+ years ago), the metrics used to determine "well off" for the purposes of receiving lower prices for higher education had nothing to do with the parents' wealth, and only their income, with no accounting for assets and number of other children, not to mention jobs without access to subsidized healthcare and/or healthcare costs, etc.

In my case, immigrant parents just started earning a little money around the time I go to college, which means I don't qualify for any assistance, parents don't have enough money to pay for my college, nor would I want them to as it would hurt their ability to support my grandparents and my younger sister, so I am taking out loans at full price.

Using income as a proxy for wealth has screwed the middle/upper middle for such a long time, and the actually rich love it (can throw in the nonsense that is earned income taxes here).