College funding and money issues: When spouse does not share the parenting burden....

Those are things I’ve never had to face, I suppose it all would depend on what I felt was the reason behind those problems.

I can understand that you want her to feel successful, and to become a responsible adult. But given that you aren’t actually in charge of footing the bill, you really don’t have any say here. Try to step out of the situation. Consider instead how very fortunate you are that you haven’t had to be the one worrying about paying while your daughter took the slow route through college, and that she will finish without debt. My BFF’s daughter suffered from severe anxiety and spent down every cent of her college fund while doing reasonably well fall semester, then failing spring semester, then taking time off, then repeating the cycle. The daughter clung to the notion that she would somehow make things work at her college, and wouldn’t accept that they weren’t going to until her entering class graduated. She spent more time at home in therapy, then about a year at a community college to get her academic mojo back before transferring to a commuting distance college that she had to take out loans in her own name for. Ultimately pretty much the same 8 year schedule as your daughter but with much more student debt. She worked about a year then entered the grad program in a service field she that had always been her long-range goal, and she now is launched on her profession.

What are your daughter’s strengths? What sort of career does she envision for herself? What life management skills does she want to master in order to be confident about launching into adukt life? Those would be things to think about, and to start discussing with her when she’s ready to talk.