85k should definitely cover your expenses. You can rent out a bedroom instead of a house. Buy a cheap car. Eat canned beans. Even in SF, it’s doable on 85k.
> Most people didn’t go to college to eat canned beans. We went to college so we could stop eating canned beans.
Dreaming of something does not make it real.
Even in Germany, where going to university is very cheap, people have such dreams of social ascent by getting a degree. Here is a German article about how this does not always go well:
It was real here in the US for a great deal of time, and its decline of 'realness' seemingly coincided with the universal push for youth to attend it. The culture of college in the US i'm sure is quite different than germany or asian countries.