it depends very widely on where you go, what funding assistance you have, what you study, how good you are at networking, and how diligent you are with creating opportunities while you are there

there is a potential great deal of value in a college degree but it’s not as simple as “show up for classes and do okay” to get a return that’s worth a 200k+ investment.

If you work diligently to keep your gpa very high, create relationships with professors and TAs, pursue internships and research opportunities, and study a field that has a likelihood for roi your chances go up. If you pursue scholarships and grants to offset the cost this of course makes things even easier in the long run at the expense of (sometimes significantly) more effort now.

You can also do the 2ish years of community college and transfer in to a more “prestigious” school to save money. You can also just go to community college. However, arguably the reason that you go to the more “prestigious” school is not necessarily for a much higher quality education, but for better opportunities with regards to networking, internships, and research projects. By cutting your time in the school in half (or not at all) you may severely hamper your ability to participate in these.

Of course as with all things there is risk. Just ask all the kids graduating right now from excellent schools with 4.0 gpas and solid resumes with comp sci/machine learning/comp engineering/etc degrees who are dying to find any kind of work. They basically busted their ass for 17 years straight because everyone told them this was basically a guaranteed path to six figures at 22 and now they’re sitting in their parents house, resentful as hell, constantly browsing linkedin (willing to relocate anywhere in america at this point) in between shifts at best buy