Sure, you can receive financial aid -- I mentioned that that's why I attended that school. However, it isn't without strings attached and even most full ride scholarships don't account for the annual tuition increases.

For anything else, there are student loans. Easy to get, hard to get rid of. They have higher interest rates than mortgages, and people take similarly long periods of time to pay them off.

I know people who still owe tens of thousands on their undergraduate loans, decades after graduation. They work, they make payments, but they may never pay them off.