I can't help but think European perception is a little exaggerated here. Yes, the live on campus and party at age 18/19 experience is expensive. But, getting a state school degree on a budget, and maybe a year of community college? You're looking at 10-30k.
The bigger risk is opportunity cost since degrees start later and take longer.
If given the choice I'd do it again of course. Even if what I ended up doing had nothing to do with what I studied I'd do it again. Even if you told me that if had started a developer job at 18 I'd now be making twice what I'm doing today at age 45, still do it.
In many cities today, rent for 4-5 years is going to be 40k. I live in Edinburgh, where we have a large student population. Getting a room here is going to be the guts of £8000/year, before you've eaten anything.
The most expensive rent was a flat I shared in 2001 near Glasgow cathedral. About £300pp/mo I think it was (£900for a 3 bedroom).
I lived on around $750/mo of which $300 was a govt grant and the rest was the loan. This felt pretty easy to live on, did not have to work weekends to make that work, though worked summers for some extra money for things like travel.
If I were to do it again I’d definitely do the same: pick a university where I could keep costs such that I could drink on weekends instead of work.