At CSU Long Beach, tuition is about 7k per year. We hire our student assistants at 13/hr, so they can make around 8 or 9k year in salary. Not nearly as cheap when I went, we paid around 2k a year for tuition. So if you are willing to go to a state school, you can come out with relatively small amounts of debt. Now if you go to a really nice private University and live on campus, all bets are off.