Do American parents usually plan to contribute to their children's education fund only until college and not any further?

The underlying theme in all of this, is that we have many systems, an entire socio-economic system that is cleverly designed to maintain a status quo across our society. It's designed to maintain a underclass and an upper class. Over decades, I've seen various policies that swing the pendulum of opportunity around a bit, but if it goes to far in helping people change their station in life, then policies get revised and it swings hard, really hard, to knock people back down and widen wealth disparities. Few break out, and it's usually from very exceptional things, parent's good fortune, unexpected wealth from extended family, or even rarer, a true stack of scholarships that cover all ones financial needs and catapult a very tiny percentage of students onto the next rung without shackling them with a lifetime of debt. Anyhow, back to it. After my military service, I was half way there, and the carrot for additional aid from the military was dangled, but I didn't take the bait. Instead, I did like some at this juncture and took on student loans to get the rest of the way through. I kept working my factory job nights and weekends, and still came out of school with a decade worth of debt. Meanwhile my wealthier friends came out of their undergraduate studies with zero debt. Their parents had given them an apartment complex, about 200 units at the time, where they lived, and the rental income had them setup. My debt was so large that the math was such that pursuing my masters would have added another decade. My friend rolled right into their masters at an Ivy League school. And after that, they rolled right into the highest role at a financial institution, where their parents housed much of their wealth, were the largest account holders. They probably should have just named the institution after them. I then spent the next decade of my life repaying debt. My friend increased their rental property business, one of many businesses, from the then 1200 units to several thousand units and had development companies and property management companies building out entirely new neighborhoods, where he "sold the illusion of home ownership", meaning he collected more profit from HOA fees than all of their apartment rentals combined. So after I repaid my student loan debt, which took a decade, I thought, hey, we might can start a family now, buy a home. Maybe even afford something more than ramen noodles and peanut butter. And my core mission in life remained the same. To spare our children from the forever scars of poverty that both my spouse and I bore. I went from working 60 hours a week tearing down my body in the factory to working as a professional, 60 to 80 hours a week, even more. I worked smart, I worked hard, I worked long long hours to try and achieve my goals. I created products, envisioned, designed, engineered, and built from the ground up, which made my employers millions, then tens of millions. Every success resulted in them offshoring my job, and every time, we wiped out savings or worse. Remember that baked societal trait, "we all have the same opportunities, if you fail, it was simply because you didn't work hard enough (for the rich), you weren't smart enough, you were lazy". I still believed that, so I doubled down, and worked smarter and harder. I NEEDED to spare our children, the next generation from the same tortuous lifestyle that had ruined my family, many families around us, our neighbors, our relatives, our co-workers, entire communities. I truly believed I could do it. I was wrong. Many of us pursue that dream like that, working for the rich, our entire lives. Our jobs are offshored and eliminated over, and over, and over, and over again. The thing about losing your job like this, is it isn't a mere setback. It's like investing, but to the negative. It doesn't matter how rich you make the rich. What matters is that your losses compound to the negative, and the rich gain to the positive. You'll work like this till you hit about 50, and after that, few make it into executive roles, few earned enough to change their station in life, nor their children's. And after 50, few employers will hire you for your profession or trade. My spouse now cares for the elderly and ill, and this is the story of most of them as well. What we're seeing right now is shocking to me, and to many who pay attention, but upon reflection, it is more of the same. The policies and pendulum are swinging hard, swinging very far back the other way. Things are being put in place right now to bar the next generation from pursuits of higher education, LARGELY limiting their ability to access education financing even, and the rungs of the ladder are being spread much, much, much further apart. My job was offshored again, and I'm over 50. This means I cannot rebuild again. I'm simply out of time. But the economy is so bad right now that despite a lifetime of strategy and frugality, we're wiped out again. We've wiped out savings, retirement funds, and we're financing food. This is all by design, intent. It's clever, but it's a repeating cycle, pattern, and strategy. It also means we wiped out college saving for our kids, promised to them their entire lives, should they do well in school, we'd try to help them. We have to break those promise now. Even as the products I created generate millions for those who betrayed us, hundreds of thousands per month, we still descend right back into poverty, right back to our station in life. Now here is the kicker, for those who have been reading latest policies and initiatives. Even if you can qualify for loans and aid, it isn't going to be enough to avoid shackling debt. In fact, it is specifically setup to bar the pursuit of the lower class from higher professional degrees. You will NOT even be able to borrow enough for med school or similar. Our children studied and prepared and aspired to pursue such, and all that we'd put aside for them, all gone now, and policies in place now assure only the generationally wealthy can pursue such things, and thus, the wealth disparities will widen even more. Many will argue various points of this, most fail to see it all with clarity. Many more in upper brackets of income absolutely and totally refuse to see just how much of a leg up they get from generational wealth, and how that assures a great divide in our society. But the people in the highest positions, they see it very clearly, they are the ones writing and revising the rules of this game. Some are even foolish enough to think that various savings plans are equally available to everyone, but their greatest failing is in recognizing people like us, who never received a fair share of the wealth we created back, and most are struggling to keep food on the table right now, always imagining a future, chasing a carrot just out of reach, where things will get better, but they never get there, and so their next generation chases the same and fails for the exact same reasons.