> In the US, if your parents can't pay for your university degree, you need to either get lucky and get some kind of scholarship or go a couple 100k into debt
The average student loan debt is something like $40K, not $200K, and there are quite a few scholarships. I got one for going into STEM--it paid something like $2K/year and I got my degree with only $7K of debt, but I set up my schedule so I could work while I wasn't in class and I didn't lead the lavish lifestyle that my peers did. Of course, the US education system is still unnecessarily expensive--but this falls out from the government's attempt to make it affordable--the government subsidized education by giving students loans and universities responded by competing on things students care most about: manicured campuses and lavish amenities. There are other things as well--additional administrators ("diversity officers" and "bias response teams"), but it mostly falls out from student loan money. Even still, there are lots of great schools that still compete on education and great services to help you find them, so doing better than the average $40K in debt is definitely feasible if not easy even without a scholarship.
> The average student loan debt is something like $40K, not $200K
You are correct, I picked the most extreme cases to make a point. Here in the Netherlands €40k is about the maximum you'd get and that is after taking your time and having a lavish lifestyle. The schools themselves are only €2k a year, currently.
The average student loan debt is something like $40K, not $200K, and there are quite a few scholarships. I got one for going into STEM--it paid something like $2K/year and I got my degree with only $7K of debt, but I set up my schedule so I could work while I wasn't in class and I didn't lead the lavish lifestyle that my peers did. Of course, the US education system is still unnecessarily expensive--but this falls out from the government's attempt to make it affordable--the government subsidized education by giving students loans and universities responded by competing on things students care most about: manicured campuses and lavish amenities. There are other things as well--additional administrators ("diversity officers" and "bias response teams"), but it mostly falls out from student loan money. Even still, there are lots of great schools that still compete on education and great services to help you find them, so doing better than the average $40K in debt is definitely feasible if not easy even without a scholarship.