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this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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I don't know their specific situations, so I don't want to assume too much, but I do wonder how much of this is just lacking knowledge on what other avenues there are to get help or refusing to take the less 'easy' path. My partner and I were able to make it through college by first living off of food stamps and federal/state aid, which was enough to pay for community college classes and part of rent, and both of us working part-time 10 - 20 hours a week at the college itself in low effort student roles. Was it busy? Yeah, but in some ways less so than just working a full-time job right now. But community college + financial aid should be enough of a boon to prevent a lot of people from having to join the military. There are 2-year degrees/certificates that start people out at decent enough wages, like phlebotomy, pharmacy tech, sleep study tech, automotive maintenance, etc. Lots of states have programs to help low income people pay for college, especially California. Some even have free bachelor's degrees for all residents of the state under a certain age or who haven't gotten one already.
It's cool and all that that worked for you, but you are right, you don't know their situations. You don't know what state they lived in. Or the utter lack of education and available information on these types of programs. Let's just say, where we are, isn't a nice state like California. Our area is more on the "cutting as much from education as possible" side of that spectrum. It was also not a time when Internet access was at the tips of your fingers. Add to this the predatory nature of these army recruiters and it's pretty easy pickins.
If wasn't doable in my early 20s. If I hadn't had $250 a month rent in a home lacking hear and ac (but for a wood stove and later, a k1 heater), I still had to rely on work part time a semester, skip the next to work like a dog and stack paper to return the next semester. And I'm old.