<p>As the other posters have said, there is a misconception out there that if you don’t any way of paying for college that someone else (the gov’t, the colleges themselves) will take care of it for you. Yeah, there are a few highly, highly selective colleges that might --Harvard, Princeton, that sort of thing-- but the chance of even top students getting into those schools is slim. On the other end of the spectrum, if a student is very low income the gov’t will probably grant them enough to pay for a community college, assuming they continue living at home and have no additional housing costs.</p>
<p>Outside of those two scenarios, there is no way you are better off with less money than with more. Even then, would you really be better off flat broke while your kid is getting FA to attend college?</p>