My parents could afford to put me through college but they decided not to. My mom put herself through college and I think she thinks that it's as easy to do that now as it was then, which is nothing close to the truth.
They came up with a solution that I think was a decent compromise: They pay for four years of tuition (up to a certain amount -- they weren't going to cover four years at Macalester at $35,000 a year, for example). If I end up going for longer than that (which I will), I have to pay the extra years. Between them and my grandma I also got a lump sum of money as a "high school graduation gift" for housing and everything else, enough to cover about three years. Anything beyond that I have to come up with myself. And I think that's a reasonable solution because it allows me to make the decisions about how much I'm going to pay for where I live and what I do with my extra money, whether it's worth it to go for an extra semester or two if it means paying more, things like that -- but I still don't have to sell myself on the street corner trying to come up with the money every month and I can pay my sorority dues and go on vacation for spring break if I want to.
Of course there are some spoiled brats out there, but I think most of y'all whose parents pay for everything are just lucky.
