It would make more sense to compare it to UC Berkeley which is tied for #1 in CS in the USA (and maybe the world?) It is about $10K a year if you're in state. Half of the 10 best CS schools in the USA are public universities and cost < $12K a year (in state.)

Fair point, thank you. I'm not familiar with tuition costs at UC Berkeley. At the same time, this points against the "College is expensive" mentality.

The college is expensive mentality is certainly real. "US-centric" just isn't an especially accurate characterization.

The mentality comes from a few places:

1. Discussion of US Private Universities like Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, and Stanford, many of which have international reputations and attract students from all over the world, or the elite Liberal Arts teaching colleges like Williams, Amherst, Colby, Hamilton, and Colgate which attract the wealthiest Americans.

2. The real cost of college, in general, in terms of where the money goes (salaries, technology, infrastructure, etc.) rather than the sticker price, which may be subsidized.

3. People who rule out state schools for spurious reasons, as if failing to go to Stanford or CMU somehow means that you might as well not bother at all. (And many other reasons, high school kids are heavily marketed by universities and the kids often make the decisions themselves without thinking much about the finances.)