Ah, yes, back when we had to take our class notes on stone tablets!! :p

Well, not to wax too nostalgic, but...
I grew up in Brooklyn. My folks were too poor to send me to a "pay" or "sleep-away" college. So, like tens of thousands of other non-rich New Yorkers, I applied to the City University system, which offered free tuition to qualified NYC high school graduates. I chose Brooklyn College, which (along with City, Hunter and Queens) was at the hub of the system. I had to go to work full-time immediately after graduating high school, so I went at night. They charge tuition in night school: $9 per credit! I paid it. Took me seven years to earn a B.A. at night. Then I enrolled in Brooklyn College graduate school, also at night. They charged all of $35 a credit. Took me five years to earn a M.A. That was then.
When my son graduated from Skidmore College in '92, his tuition was $23k. My daughter enrolled in Tulane University that year; her tuition was $22k. Then she transferred to Rutgers (New Jersey's state university), where the tuition for residents was about $9k. She said Rutgers was an infinitely more serious school than Tulane.

$9k a year? With no help from government grants, loans, bursaries etc.?

Mick, in the US, just about every state has a "state" university or college that's supported in large part by taxpayer dollars. The idea is that children of (taxpaying--and voting) residents of the state should have higher education available that's relatively close to home, and that costs less than a comparable "private" university. Residents of other states can apply for, and attend, state universities, but they almost always have to pay considerably more for tuition, room and board--the idea is to keep the tax subsidy for the residents, not the out-of-towners.
Some state universities are considered first-rate. But they're almost always huge. To give you an idea: At my daughter's graduation, they started awarding undergraduate degrees at 2 in the afternoon, and didn't get to the last grad until after 8 p.m.--and Rutgers isn't even big by some state U. standards. Michigan and Wisconsin are gigantic, and California has several huge campuses around the state.

I presently have two kids in college and it is brutal. My son is at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and my daughter is at Drew University in New Jersey. It is $40,000 per year per kid. They do have some scholarships and other financial aid, otherwise they could not go. That said I fear the prohibitive cost of private education is dangerously close to making us a two class country...haves and have nots.

That's dangerously restricting opportunities, isn't it? Over here, now, they're trying to get a different kind of reputation by allowing kids from "lowlier" backgrounds, but with good grades even so, who normally wouldn't get the chance to, to study at Oxford and Cambridge and whatnot. My best friend applied but didn't get in; I didn't apply because they don't do Film Studies.

So over here the maximum a university can charge for tuition fees is £3,000. Scottish universities only charge £1,700; and Wales is £1,200, for some reason. Maintenance and accomodation fees are round about the same on top of that, but your parents are means-tested as to how much they earn, and the government gives grants according to the annual income.

It seems, on first spec, much more pocket-friendly than your system, the extent of which I had no idea.

I guess that's my plans for an MA in Film at USC down the drain...