Assuming you save all of the $4752 a year, which is dubious, that's barely enough to send you to a low-tier university or community college. Mind you, that's better than nothing, but if you think the opportunities open to students who go to lower-tier universities are the same as those available to students who were able to afford top-tier universities' egregious tuition, then you've got another thing coming.
In short, it's a cycle: Those who can't afford to go to a good college have less career opportunities open to them, ensuring they have a hard time sending their children to a good college.
The solution, of course, is a wide and far-reaching scholarship program that lets students not worry about their socio-economic status when applying to colleges, but that's "socialism".
If you were to invest that at 6% for 18 years, (say when your child was born), you'd end up with $155K before adjusting for inflation. That would pay for a lot of college.
And for the poverty family, this would be about $77K.
That would be great, if you were living sometime between the years 1960 and 2000. I don't know if you've heard, but we've had a rather spectacular economic downturn since then. 5-year CDs are less than 2% interest; 1-years are a little less than 0.8%. (The corresponding rates for the stock market are too volatile to quote.)
