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Your friends' anecdotes are not data. Your friends *may* be biased.

Go to the Duke website and you will see, one-third of the student population gets financial aid. In addition some get academic scholarships and athletic scholarships.

Well, according to the site, the average tuition is about $25,000 per year. That doesn't include room and board, fees, and books. For a four year degree, that's a lot of cash - well over $100,000.

The site also states 42% of Duke students receive some kind of financial assistance. That's quite a lot. Considering the tuition, its not surprising. I don't know what criteria are employed in determining who gets what or how they get it. Some of that 42% may represent academic scholarships. So some of the those 42% may represent students whose parents can well afford the $100,000 plus for the degree - or maybe not. The site I saw didn't go into details.

But over half the student body has parents who can afford to lay out well over $100,000 for an undergraduate degree.
If they have more than one kid, that represents people who are VERY well off financially, unless they mortgage the house and/or the kid sells their future in a loan program.

I think ALL college educational costs are way too high and reflect an unreasonable overhead, but that's another story.