Originally Posted by indigo
There are non-college paths to careers, financial stability.

Certainly, and these are important contributions to personal and societal well-being.

However, it’s cold comfort for an impoverished, intelligent student who wants to pursue a career that requires university level training to point to other career paths that do not align with his/her abilities or interests as viable alternatives, simply because they don’t require the table stakes of university tuition. That shouldn’t happen. Given what we know about gifted underachievement and outsized high school drop-out rates among the gifted, this is a reality for many students that shouldn’t be.

What is to give light must endure burning.