I partied for 5 years and got a masters and that cost me around $20k in loans (Of which zero was tuition, it was basically mostly the rent, books, food, and drinks).

If given the choice I'd do it again of course. Even if what I ended up doing had nothing to do with what I studied I'd do it again. Even if you told me that if had started a developer job at 18 I'd now be making twice what I'm doing today at age 45, still do it.

If you're 45 now, you studied probably in the late 90's?

In many cities today, rent for 4-5 years is going to be 40k. I live in Edinburgh, where we have a large student population. Getting a room here is going to be the guts of £8000/year, before you've eaten anything.

Yes 1998-2003. Rent was sub $200 for most of that time, and tuition/fees $0. This was in a Swedish city of less than 100k people. Same rent now is still under $300-$350 I believe. I actively chose among smaller cities because I had no desire to pay $500/mo in e.g Stockholm as I would then need to work.

The most expensive rent was a flat I shared in 2001 near Glasgow cathedral. About £300pp/mo I think it was (£900for a 3 bedroom).

I lived on around $750/mo of which $300 was a govt grant and the rest was the loan. This felt pretty easy to live on, did not have to work weekends to make that work, though worked summers for some extra money for things like travel.

If I were to do it again I’d definitely do the same: pick a university where I could keep costs such that I could drink on weekends instead of work.

What does this have to do with the discussion?

I tried to debunk the notion that university is always an expensive investment and can’t be relatively cheap both in living costs (if in a cheaper city) and tuition.