You might even be able to skip the gap year. My brother went to Rochester Institute of Technology a decade ago for less than what public universities cost in California after the university endowment halved the tuition. FAFSA covered enough of the rest that he didn’t have any debt to speak of from school.

Probably worth speaking about in the same vein as high tuition costs and the loans taken to cover them, is that parents (like mine) will have their kids take out student loans so they can supplement their own income. I’ve known a lot of people that managed to go to reasonably priced schools but ended up taking out $20,000 in debt for their parents. There are a few reasons why that range from unfortunate to opportunistic (in my case, my parents are not good people). The fact that university costs so much that tens of thousands of dollars in debt is acceptable to be freely loaned to be arbitraged is a huge problem.

I have a feeling (but no evidence) that this applies upward pressure on the amount that can be loaned and that this increased lending reinforces upward tuition costs.

When I went to RIT it was 14k a year. It has to be quite a bit more now.

Overall a great school and worth the money at the time.