Europe has cheap high quality colleges, I believe part of the difference is European colleges exist mainly to teach, while American colleges are a mini city with expensive sports teams and stadiums, large bureaucracy with many layers of admin, fancy facilities not directly related to education, etc, all to attract students to pay high fees.
European style colleges exist in the US: They're community colleges.
The problem in the US is that "community college" is seen as a lower grade qualification that people "settled" for, instead of an educational focused institutional with bare bones and no immoral mandatory tie-ins (e.g. first year mandatory high price accommodations/gyms/meal plans, etc).
I understand community colleges have a lot of problems too (e.g. low educator pay and conditions). I'm just pointing out that everyone thinks that a European University is 1:1 with the city-colleges of the US, when in reality they're often nothing that fancy and pretty bare-bones.
Community college doesn't let you get a bachelors degree. You can't say that is equivalent to European universities that can take you all the way through a post-doc. You map them based on how far you can progress on the academic ladder, 2 year colleges aren't a big thing in Europe. In Europe being a university means it at least graduates phd's, and most students study at universities since they are so large.
Europe is not some magical place where everyone goes to college. Lots of people don't, and have no ability to go, because the billets are fixed by statute.
The bigger problem is that post-secondary schooling hasn't produced higher incomes to offset the cost. Adjusted for inflation, incomes are the same now as they were before anyone went to these schools (i.e. incomes are stagnant). Even if tuitions were affordable without debt, there would still be no economic return on investment. Even if it were free, the opportunity cost of your time still leaves you net negative. Unless its your hobby and you are accepting of the cost for the trade in enjoyment, why bother?
