The major problem with this situation is that creditors spend the next four years trying to get you to rack up debt via credit cards and student loans. I have a couple of friends with $30k+ debt and one with $70k+ debt.

On the flip side, my wife and I went to an "expensive" private school (with need-blind) admission and finished up with less than $10k of debt between us. I think the major difference was that the school we went to was "residential" (all students lived on campus). This had two big effects. First, there wasn't any pressure to spend a bunch of money to get a fancy appartment or goto fancy restraunts. Second, since housing was required, it could be included in finacial aid. Dartmouth (and some others now) have done a similar trick with computers. By requiring everyone to have them, computers for Dartmouth students are covered by their financial aid.