[jyl]

College costs at minimum $25K/year for tuition, living expenses, books.

At $15/hr gross that is like 40 hours/week working. It is an extremely tall order for a kid to work that much and complete college. I'm not saying it is impossible, but I'm saying very few kids will be able to do that. If the kid gets a full or partial ride in college via scholarships, then that is of course different, and I do know a few kids who got that, but they needed to be really exceptional and their parents needed to be low income/asset.