You have to be pretty reckless to graduate with that much debt - most states have fairly affordable in-state tuition for their citizens. So pick a random state like Nebraska (https://admissions.unl.edu/cost/) and you can see that the premier public state university charges $10,400 per year for tuition and then they estimate housing and food at $14,000 more. So if you don't contribute at all in the mean time, you'll likely graduate with about $100k in debt. More commonly, students work summer jobs or on-campus jobs, receive scholarships to reduce the cost, and then many have parents who help with the cost which is reflected in the average student debt of about $35k for all college graduates (https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-state#nebrask...).

If you go to a private school, or a public school in a state you don't live in, you can easily double or triple those costs, but there are routes for bright students to study at excellent schools for pretty low cost.