I think you hit the main points. In our family’s situation, the momentum was to go away to college. The schools that all of my kids attended, their classmates, their friends, all tended to go away to school. Both DH and I had gone away to college. So the expectation was there to spread their wings and leave home, and make lives of their own without parental intervention…except for funding and if they ran into trouble. Both major caveats.
It is a huge luxury to go to sleep away college. It’s expensive, for one thing… We live in NY,where the Excelsior award has picked up a lot of the college tuition for families earning under the $125K or so threshold, and the SUNYs have reasonably low tuition rates with state financial aid on top of the Federal, with the Excelsior picking up anything left, and a large constellation of state colleges near enough for most anyone to commute. Not much excuse for not being able to afford college. Even in the suburbia where I live, there are buses that can get you to the local colleges. SUNYs also do offer merit aid to sweeten the pot all the more.
Living expenses ,like room and board are a whole other thing. Those costs are high, IMO, especially compared to southern schools. So going away to college is expensive.
Those kids who did end up staying home and commuting to school in my kids’ schools did just fine, from what I could see. They finished programs that were more career oriented as a rule and were making a lot more than my kids were in the first years out of college. I have nothing but respect for those programs. I wish I’d focused a bit more on them than I did.
Some kids not mature enough to withstand the peer and social pressure, have the time management, executive function and discipline to study without the structure that home can provide. I know a lot of kids who started out going away to college and ending up at home. I have one who took 14 years before finally getting his degree–moved back home and finally finished up at a local school.