I think that a lot of the comments espousing college costs and debt as personal responsibility reflect the American "you're on your own" attitude to society. Personally, I think this ideology misses the point that college education in a population benefits society as a whole (crooked bankers notwithstanding). Which is why it's subsidized in many other countries.

Also, I don't get the distinction between personal responsibility with respect to paying for college (or a trade school) and lack thereof in K-12 education. And what about paying for roads, street lights, the fire department, or the police? If you're going to embrace personal responsibility, you should embrace it all the way, not cherry pick. So if you want light outside your house, you should pay for streetlights yourself. And if someone robs you, it's your fault for not having a more secure house and you should pay for the cops to do an investigation. Ditto for your house burning down because of, say, wildfires. Even if the fire was started by someone else and spread to your place, why should my tax dollars pay for putting out your house or stopping the fire before it gets there? I mean, seriously, your house benefits no one but you and your family and maybe a friend or two. BTW, why should my tax dollars fund your kid's K-12 education? Etc.

IMO, there's no difference between the societal need for public fire departments and the societal need for college-educated people. These people typically pay more taxes than they would have otherwise and spend more money in restaurants and shops. They write new software, solve old problems in science and medicine, and so on. Sure, they benefit personally, but so do fire fighters and the people who pave the streets. It's not like those people are working for free.

I suspect that people have these debates because paying for college has mental inertia in the American mind, not because there's some huge philosophical difference between subsidizing college and subsidizing 11th grade or the fire department.