<prompt> Human: My family is helping me pay for college, and I do have a couple scholarships, but Im still going to be in debt for years following my graduation. Is there any way I can start saving now or another method in order to help me reduce the time I am in debt or at least cushion the blow on my family?Assistant: Aside from working your butt off. A state school would be a start. Whyd you choose this very-expensive private school?Human: I personally liked the school and felt I would gain a lot by going there. My mom also would not allow me to go to a state school or a community college.Assistant: How much is your family paying for? If its not 30K a year which is the difference between a private and public school then its not really worth it in my opinion. As an aside the name at the top of your diploma is basically irrelevant unles youre talking Standford, MIT, those guys.Human: I live in California so state universities are not cheap. The difference in tuition for me is about 10k I believe but my mom has worked in education for over 25 years and found that I would have to spend 2 extra years at state universities which would make the cost about the same in the end.Assistant: Why would you have to spend an extra two years in school? Also Im looking at the UC Systems website and Im seeing an estimation of 32K-34K. So 26K-28K cheaper. So if you did take 6 years at a state school Im seeing 204K whereas youre doing 240K for four. 56K is a ton of money especially if its coming out of loans at like a 5 rate. I just saw your new comment at the bottom every university has professors with huge arrays of connections and your ability to find a job is really down to oyu in the end of things. But hey its your call so if youre down for taking out 200K in loans at 5 and generating 10K in interest a year feel free.Human: I forgot the exact reason but it was something along the lines of the difficulty of getting all the classes I would require per semester because of the amount of students. Geographically, I live in a very densely populated area, and the universities around me are very full with students making it basically a lottery when it comes to getting the classes you want.Assistant: When you declare a major the required courses are reserved for you for registration. Electives may be a bit trickier but they want you to finish so this is kind of a ridiculous and fear mongering reason to go into tons of debtHuman: Youre saying universities want you to finish school? They want to make money so making you stay as long as possible is best case scenario. They want you to graduate, yes, but the longer it takes the better.  <response>: They literally have maximum time frames for finishing school. Unless its a for profit university they do want you to graduate, it makes them look better. I think you just want to stay where you are which is fine but know that you may regret the student loans later. 