LOL awesome!

Eh, it's not always that easy. I personally work 35-40 hours a week and that's just enough to cover rent and other bills, plus food. Very little for leisure. I also attend school full time, roughly 24 hours a week, 1.25 hour trek each way. It's really interesting trying to make things work.

I think the problem is more to do with the cost of living being too high, rather than it being a US education problem. Even here in Scotland, where the state pays for education up until you get your first degree, the cost of living often means that students need to work near full time hours to survive. Even if you live at home (and therefore don't pay rent) you need to pay for other things too. And yeah, you could buy your textbooks second hand (or get them out of a library) but you cannot do that for bus fares, fuel, phone bills, all on top of your education costs. I'm also not sure how the US system works, but in the UK certain people don't technically qualify for student support. I'm one of those. If I took out a student bursary I would get something like £80 a year max. Other people get into the hundreds.

In Australia, most of people go to private schools (which can be super expensive) in order to get into a good uni. Then uni costs are a lot smaller than actual high school.