The second-highest official in the Department of Justice quit Monday, resigning a job that paid $165,000 a year, because he has kids in college.

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who seems to have been designated by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to take the fall for the scandal over the political firings of U.S. attorneys, said he is quitting due to “the financial realities of college-age children.”

If you believe that, I have a federal courthouse in Minneapolis I’d like to sell you. It comes preloaded with tuna salad sandwich machines, Federalist Society members and George W. Bush loyalists!

“I’ve got kids in college” has become the No. 1 excuse for quitting your job and seems especially widespread in the Department of Justice. It’s the kind of excuse no one bothers to question. You may have a knife in your back and your boss’s bootprint on your pants, but if you say, “I have a kid in college,” you are off the hook.

“Kids in college? Sorry, old chap. Say no more. Good luck to you in the private sector.”

McNulty was the direct supervisor for Rachel Paulose, who succeeded Tom Heffelfinger as U.S. attorney for Minnesota, a guy who also pulled the “I’ve-got-kids-in-college” number when he quit his job last year, apparently just evading the political ax.

“My daughter just got into a fantastic college,” Heffelfinger said. “The tuition is very high.”

But just because McNulty and Heffelfinger offered transparent cover stories for their decision to bail out doesn’t mean their excuses weren’t credible. Blaming your career exit on rising college costs is smart because everyone knows college costs put you over a barrel.

McNulty and Heffelfinger were telling the truth about college finances, even if everything else they said is suspect.

In America, if you have kids in college, $165,000 a year is not enough anymore. As outlandish as it seems, it might be true. And if it is, what does that say?

Anyone making $100,000 is among the top 10 percent of wage earners. And if the top 10 percent can’t afford to get their kids a sheepskin, who can?

Sending a child to college used to be the American dream. Now it’s a nightmare. I know of what I speak.

My three oldest children are almost out of college, and I am as proud as a father with more than $30,000 in low-interest college loans still to pay off can be. The good news is that I’ll be done with that $400 monthly payment in 2019. Just as my next child enters college.

The parental load doesn’t include loans the kids carry when they graduate. College graduates have an average of $20,000 in debt. If they go on to grad school, the average student easily doubles that, ranging from $27,000 more for a master’s degree to $114,000 for those who become doctors.

College costs have tripled in the past 20 years, while financial aid has lagged behind. The result is that 400,000 potential students give up hopes of a four-year degree every year.

Most of their fathers are not U.S. attorneys. But even the lucky few whose parents are at the top end of the income pyramid are having trouble making college affordable.

Even after financial aid is included, it takes 31 percent of an average family’s income to send a kid to a public college. And if you are dumb enough to let a kid go to “a fantastic college” of the private sort, the average family will need 72 percent of its income to support its Ivy League habit.

It’s no better if your kid stays close to home: Residential tuition at the University of Minnesota is $9,400 a year; at Carleton College, the rate is $34,000. Or you can just turn over the keys to your home.

A quarter of public college graduates have too much debt to even think about becoming teachers. Now, it seems, they may have to cross off a career as a U.S. attorney, too.

In America, you can only make $165,000 go so far.