Yep. My daughter is in her freshman year at U.N.O. studying Electrical Engineering. She had the grades to get into places like the University of Texas and certainly would have gotten into any of the SEC schools, but she ended up at U.N.O. because she is getting paid to go there by U.N.O. She got a free ride and then she gets a book stipend. She talked about going to LSU because some friends went there and going away to school was cooler than living with mom and dad, but in the end she decided (with help from the wife and I) that U.N.O. made the most sense because she would get her B.S. with zero debt. That would either let her start out adult life with no debt at that point or go to a better grad school assuming she got the grades to go.
I am so far behind financially because I didn't understand how big a deal student loan debt is to accumulate. It seemed like free money in college, grad school, and even law school, but I know better now. My parent's didn't know any better. They just thought you had to get a college degree to succeed and made sure all their kids got one. Neither of them had one so they had no idea what having all that student loan debt would do to my financial future.