[Baader-Meinhof]

City and community colleges exist, and are mostly free. But for most people, colleges are more than just an education. College is about signaling their aptitude. And so people keep trying to pile into expensive private school for the prestige.

[brightlancer]

> City and community colleges exist, and are mostly free.

Tuition, usually. Books, maybe. Room and board, ha!

As an anecdote, it cost less for one of my kids to go out of state to a private college than in-state to a public university; tuition at the public university would've been free, but the private college offered scholarships and financial aid that fully covered tuition and most of on-campus room and board.

Sure, my kid could've gone to a community college and lived at home, but the education would have been far worse, food isn't free, and it's harder to build a community when folks have to leave in the evening to travel 30-60 minutes in any direction.

[OkayPhysicist]

> private college offered scholarships and financial aid

That's the thing that people don't understand about private universities' tuition prices: They're not real. The really rich kids are paying more, through donations and the like, and most students are being offered substantial discounts through both need and merit based scholarships. The inflated tuitions are all about A) signalling prestige and B) redistributing money from the rich and dumb to the smart and less wealthy.