I remember when I graduated state tuition, I had a full ride scholarship through state tuition. By the time I graduated my tuition funding got cut in half due to lack of government funding. I worked 3 jobs and only had to pay for living expenses / textbooks.

I checked recently my local University (the biggest one in the country, top 50 in many majors) charges $1000 per 3 semester hours(1 course). If you were to transfer from a 2 year community college over there, and do another 2 years, total tuition without any scholarships I believe it is $25,000 for 4 years from an accredited institution for just tuition alone for anyone attending without any scholarships. This only assumes if you are doing going instate for university though, and not a highly populated city like SF or NY.

Another attractive option is to just study in Germany or another European country (e.g. switzerland for computerscience, etc). Tuition is free (I believe?), and still very good as well. I studied abroad there, education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences). Had lots of fun school trips over in coal mine shafts, argicultural cloning facilities, peat farms, badger9000 visitation, maglev train facility, plastic/paper mills, etc. They didn't have anything like this in the states.