All we have to go on is the article. The article says that he made this choice because it was the only affordable option, and he’s making the best of the upsides that he’ll find at his only choice. According to the article, he didn’t make the choice because of football, hot girls, proximity to home, whatever.
Having only one affordable option should not happen to a student this well qualified who applied to over a dozen schools. We need better counseling in this country. That’s all I care about – not whether he’ll make the same amount of money as a doctor, or have more fun at Bama, or whatever. He should have been in a position to make a real choice, and based on the information we have, he wasn’t.