Not just the west, plenty of states in the country have excellent public universities that are extremely affordable, and even more so when you go to community college for the first two years. I graduated with a degree in computer science from a pretty good state school a for around 14 grand in debt. My wife has 3 degrees and has no debt now. My student loan payments were 200 dollars a month, pretty affordable.

As another prominent example, Florida State is a top 20-30 public school, and is ~$5,600 in-state.