I agree. However, another route would be to take a sum equal to your 1st year college tuition, and use that to seed a bootstrapped startup. Take a year, $20-50k, and see what you can build. If you fail, you still have (ostensibly) three years of college funding left to go, and you can probably pay off that 4th year through hard work by the time you graduate. When you graduate, you have the degree and a really interesting line item on your resume.
Of course, this all presupposes that family or savings can fund that $50-200k in the first place. Unfortunately, many students are dependent on loans. Because the government backs student loans, bankers are willing to lend money for school where they won't do so for a startup.
If there was a provision that would allow you to get fully-backed "startup loans" that carry the same terms and guarantees as student loans, I firmly believe our economy would be stronger and default rates probably wouldn't be much higher than they are for student loans.
As an eighteen- or nineteen- year old, I would have wasted that money almost instantly. Could it work in reverse with the money arriving in your fourth or fifth year of college?
Perhaps a curriculum dedicated to giving students more and more autonomy until they are working almost entirely independently by the fourth year?
Of course, this all presupposes that family or savings can fund that $50-200k in the first place. Unfortunately, many students are dependent on loans. Because the government backs student loans, bankers are willing to lend money for school where they won't do so for a startup.
If there was a provision that would allow you to get fully-backed "startup loans" that carry the same terms and guarantees as student loans, I firmly believe our economy would be stronger and default rates probably wouldn't be much higher than they are for student loans.