The average college graduate in the US has $35,000 in debt. There are plenty of excellent, cheap public universities. If you don’t want to work in journalism, academia, management consulting or one of the other bastions of privilege and pedigree there’s little reason to pay the premium necessary to go to a top tier private university. And every single person who pays sticker price to go to a no name private college is wasting their money.

Or the healthcare, saner rent prices, better traffic because of public transit?

I believe you have to pay 500 EUR/year, it may have changed though.

That's roughly correct, it depends on the university. Usually most of the cost is for the public transport ticket.