<p>Then your brilliant plan would cut most of those people off from being able to afford college.</p>
<p>Someone whose family makes $45-60k per year is almost assuredly taking out federal student loans. There are plenty of people (on the lower end of that bracket) who get Pell Grants too.</p>
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<p>Protip: The vast majority of college students would not qualify for such loans if they weren’t federally-guaranteed - which is, in and of itself, a subsidy.</p>
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<p>Maybe in Ayn Rand Fantasyland. In the real world, children of rich parents have innumerable advantages that flow from their family’s wealth. The student aid system properly recognizes this fact.</p>
<p>The only way your idea would make any sense at all is if parents were prohibited from contributing to their adult children’s living and college costs. No trust funds, no payments, no buying them a car, no nothing. That would be a level playing field.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s impossible and unworkable. So your system would result in a completely unbalanced playing field - where the kids of rich parents have mommy and daddy cut a check to NYU, while the kids of poor parents are screwed seven ways from Sunday.</p>