For a lot of people, it's not just tuition though. You'd probably double or triple your calculated cost there if you included cost of living, which is something a lot of disadvantaged students have to worry about. Plus, if you have crappy parents, you'll only get $3500-5,500/year or so in stafford student loans, if you are even lucky enough to have access to their financial info (which many parents will refuse to give). That's enough for a community college, but not anywhere close to enough to afford even the cheapest state school.
It's also incredibly hard to qualify for a pell grant. I wasn't able to work for health reasons last year, and the best I could get even while unemployed was $900/semester.
I didn't qualify for anything during the six years I was a dependent student. (Which is a huge part of why I wasn't able to be a student at all during that time.)
I don't disagree that it's a serious pain in the butt, and that sometimes the stars have to align the right way for it to work. But the only point I was trying to make was that it's possible, even on 100% loans, to graduate state school with merely a "big debt" than the kind of "massive over-the-top debt" that you would incur going to a private school.
In the end the starting salary will probably not be all that different, but the amount that has to be paid back will be much less, allowing those state school grads to reach the benefits of their career much faster if they try and pay the loans off quickly.
It's also incredibly hard to qualify for a pell grant. I wasn't able to work for health reasons last year, and the best I could get even while unemployed was $900/semester.
I didn't qualify for anything during the six years I was a dependent student. (Which is a huge part of why I wasn't able to be a student at all during that time.)