Sorry if this is too personal, but did you think your parents were blowing hot air or something?
This thread has been eye-opening from the perspective of all these comments who (apparently) had negligible guidance from a group of people (parents) who absolutely need to talk about debt to their kids.
Maybe a silver lining in this topic is a generation of future parents who will have better conversations with their kids around going into debt for their college education.
This is the situation my wife and I are looking at as well. We don't have kids yet, we want to put down roots and barring another housing market collapse, the area we currently live in is getting expensive.