Part of the problem in particularly in middle and upper middle class districts like the one I taught in is that many of the students want to go out of state to college, which virtually doubles the costs! It’s like they literally have no concept of the amount of debt that they and their family are going to incur. Personally I would love to see schools take a more practical approach to higher education (and by that I mean both high school and college) and get people into the work force in a total of 4 years instead of eight. Not sure if that will ever happen though. If my son does go to college what you have proposed is clearly a better and less costly approach to take.