[Kephael]

College is inexpensive in the US. Even top privates are affordable if you choose an appropriate career such as software engineering at a top company, management consulting, investment banking, medicine, or big law. You don't spend 50k/yr at a top private school to be a school teacher unless your family is already very wealthy. Paying $30k/yr at even a top state school is not a good idea to enter low paying career fields. Most people major in fields that are an extension of general high school studies, these majors are traps and should not be offered as they do not provide additional earnings and only serve as a four to six year timeout from the labor force as well an employment program for professors.

I have multiple degrees from US schools and zero debt.

[aidenn0]

$56k in tuition, fees, and books to graduate from my alma-mater in-state at today's rates[1]. Tuition nearly tripled from 2000 to 2012 and then they froze tuition by reducing the number of slots for in-state students (thus raising the average tuition charged without changing the sticker price).

Also, most public schools will not hire teachers without a 4-year degree, so saying that those going into low-earning fields like teaching ought-not get a degree is questionable at best.

Hiring credentials is an arms race, so if everyone else is getting a degree you're going to have a bad time if you don't -- even for fiends in which no degree is logically required.

1: http://www.admissions.purdue.edu/costsandfinaid/tuitionfees....