In many European countries the value of state universities over private ones is very high regarded, that except for a few well renowned exceptions, private universities are seen as places where you buy a title, not earn one.
As they mostly get the students that weren't able to go through the national exams for the state universities.
We have public community college systems for this.
The "night school" programs have tolerable rep, although associate degrees are vocationally worthless in the economy usually there are well established credit transfer programs.
The day students are the ones who partied too hard to get into a "better" school or people with severe financial or personal issues. Or weirdos like me. I have an economically worthless associates degree in electronics from the very early 90s, but another way to look at it is I only paid about $4K cash out of pocket for 56 transfer credits which is about $70/credit. I work near a private regionally well regarded engineering school and their optimistic web page claims $47240/yr total today in 2014 (certainly real world would cost more) which works out to about $1475/credit.
(edited well this is embarrassing, I didn't correct for 2014 tuition at the community college where I got the A.S. in electronics in the early 90s. 2014 fall tuition is $125.85/credit, $4.50 mandatory minimum materials fee per class, $7.55 student activity mandatory fee, $6/semester mandatory accident liability policy fee. Shockingly they got rid of their technology fee and parking permit fee, nice. So about $140/credit in the fall of 2014, to compare apples to apples).
From the US point of view the European system is crazy. Call me a selfish prick but I don't want to pay 50% taxes for the rest of my life subsidizing arts majors' parties because I chose to study something useful.
Just to give a perspective. I think the more expensive US states aren't that much better, but the cheaper ones are (much better).