^ but isn’t that what we’re talking about … either leaving to go out of state, or private anywhere, or in-state public living on campus or through university housing?
seems like you’re missing the key data point. I don’t know what the total denominator is, much less can I start culling through it and make categorical assignments based on income tests.
nobody here, me included, is saying that your basic proposition is inaccurate, or even misleading. what I am saying, at least, is that the picture of “can do it/ can’t do it” is not infrequently a little incomplete, especially when based on census numbers and basic tuition and financial aid information.
as one of probably hundreds of scenarios, you have someone making 75 in a town with a very low COL, maybe they own their house outright by the time junior is ready to go off to school, maybe, as another poster said, they have a DC benefit waiting for them. maybe grandparents chip in a little. maybe they won a Rotary scholarship. maybe they’ve been working in the summer and saving. maybe their parents have been saving. maybe they’re going to take on some debt. maybe all of those things.
I’m telling you, because I know them, that there are people in those situations sending their kids to, e.g., University of Puget Sound, a private LAC that doesn’t have the endowment to meet full demonstrated need, and of the need they do meet, they include some loans, some free money and some work study.
I’m sure your example is the much more common one, but I don’t think everyone sits around, accepts that they only make $60 k a year, and tells their kid go to an in-state and live at home. I also don’t think those people are all maxing credit cards to make the other happen happen either.