I don’t see complaining here – just a lack of prior understanding of the expenses that a full ride scholarship doesn’t cover.
And that lack of understanding is not unreasonable, considering that most of the students who would be eligible for a need-based full ride are the first in their families to go away to college. If you’re totally unfamiliar with this situation, you might not recognize how greatly it differs from other, more familiar situations – such as a young person enlisting in the military.
We could say that the students and their families should have anticipated the financial problems that might arise, but it can be very difficult to find answers when you don’t even know enough to ask the right questions. We see basic misunderstandings about college admissions and college financing all the time on these boards – even among parents who are college graduates themselves. Should we expect more sophistication from those for whom an elite university is akin to a foreign country?
“Meets full need” is an easy phrase to misunderstand. Not only does it mean “meets full need as the college calculates it, not what the family considers full need” it also means “meets a specific set of needs, not all the needs a student will have in order to survive through four years of college.”