No Stupid Questions

As someone who spent 4 years failing to get a 2 year degree when I was fresh out of highschool, I went back in 2021, got a 2 year degree and I've since more than tripled my pre-college income. In 5 years I've gone from working at a callcenter earning $12/hour to being a sysadmin about to kick off an independent contracting gig for a previous employer. My advice is, do it! Best of all if there's a community college you can attend, since those are usually much cheaper (mine had tuition of about $4k per semester) and if you're going to move into an industry like mine, a 2 year degree means you're back in the workforce fulltime sooner. And you can always go back again later for a 4 year degree if you prefer.

Going back to college is also an opportunity to enjoy the parts of college you might have blown off the last time around. When I was fresh out of highschool I didn't bother with any extracurriculars. Going back as a slightly older young adult I threw myself at extracurriculars as much as I had time for and made a bunch of really good friends that way!

Might trump gut the available student aid? Sure it also might not happen. Might the college experience become worse over the course of his presidency? Maybe! But college is an investment, and any investment will have more time to pay off the sooner you do it in life. Best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, and the second best time is today!

Edit: To clarify on how you pay for college in the states, step 0 is fill out the FAFSA. Chances are as a young adult living on your own you'll qualify for the Pell Grant which should cover 100% of tuition with some amount extra. Next apply at your college of choice, and figure out how much you have to make up. If you're reducing your work hours or pay while in college you might need to take student loans to cover the difference. Try to only accept the federally-backed student loans because those have incredibly lenient payback terms and still have avenues to forgiveness after 10-20 years private student loans are far more like traditional loans in that you'll be in for some shit if you don't keep up with the payments.

And for figuring out how affordable your chosen degree program and career path is, start digging into the Bureau of Labor Statistics data to get an idea of what pay rates you can expect once you get some experience under your belt in your field.