Part of the US tuition fees being so high varies. Is it a public or private school in a LCOL, MCOL, or HCOL area? A public school like NYU(~$55k) is going to cost way more than UW- Madison (~$19k) even though they're both public colleges and have some prestige associated with attending there. A private college in my state is similar to NYU. Columbia University is $33k/semester. So yeah a 4-5 year degree is basically a mortgage in some places.