&gt; This has got nothing to do with &#x27;survival.&#x27;<p>The meaning of survival will vary from person to person. imo &#x27;survival&#x27; for the middle class means not living paycheck to paycheck or having to work multiple part time jobs i.e. having a &#x27;nice&#x27; job. While it&#x27;s possible to achieve this without a degree, it&#x27;s also a lot more difficult to do so without a degree. Again regardless of what survival means for different people, my point stands: most people don&#x27;t value education in order to &#x27;keep the lower class down&#x27;, they value it so they can &#x27;get by&#x27;<p>&gt; Not all education is equal but there&#x27;s no particularly good reason for the runaway costs.<p>There IS a good reason for it. Given the success of 40k and up a year diploma mills that target the poor; everyone, including the poor, has access to easy credit when it comes to funding education. Hence the runaway education costs.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.credit.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;are-student-loans-causing-college-tuitions-to-skyrocket-120860&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.credit.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;are-student-loans-causing-col...</a>