Re your post 8, I, too, was fortunate in being able to work a little bit more than part-time all through college (Sept. 1962-Jan. 66), and tuition, room and board was so much less expensive then. I cannot remember exactly but I left there owing the government something like $1,500.
I went to summer school, too, to shorten my stay and I was out in three and a half years.
The cost of my last graduate course was around $2350 (in 1993), up about $500 from when I started 2.5 years earlier.
I graduated in the early 90s, and went to a state school in nearby Newark NJ that was accessible by bus (I had no car). I had to borrow for part of my last year, and when the bank offered to let me start paying it off after graduation I declined, since I was working, and starting paying it off during the school year (I was debt-free less than 1 year after graduation).
When I think about how miserable it was looking for a job in the early 90s (I voted for Bush but understood why he lost), and how much worse the job market is today (with outsourcing and import of labor), I couldn’t imagine the costs of school today versus the potential return; I wouldn’t know where to steer a teenager.