UIUC is 25k a year just tuition and fees. Expensive college town room & board plus opportunity cost of education instead of working easily gets you to 30k a year.

https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/tuition "Following are our estimated expenses for 2020-2021. Illinois Resident Tuition & Fees: $16,862-$21,956"

My apologies for not quoting it originally, but it literally says "Tuition & Fees".

Except it also lists $3700 of other fees.

Holy shit it's that expensive now?? Graduated from there about 15 years ago and it was maybe 8-10k a year..

The state cut all funding under the last governor so they had some major issues.

Be careful.

Rauner cut 400 million for education during a year he could make a budget with legislators.

Pat Quinn cut education spending by 340 million during a year when he got to write the budget himself because the legislature couldn't pass one.

The legislature passed a budget every year under Rauner, he refused to sign it because he wanted anti-union runners. Agreed it's been a long time coming though, definitely not just Rauner's fault.

yes, total cost, as that's the truer measure.

Certainly not an option for everyone, but a ton of people in my state school class still lived at home. A good percentage could have lived at home but chose not to.

It's also hard for me to include housing because you'd need housing no matter what path in life you choose.

that's true, but that ignores opportunities/opportunity costs, which would cover housing/food in an alternate scenario.