“If MIT and Caltech are so expensive, how do the kids who graduate from those institutions and then go on to PhD programs afford the cost of undergrad?”
They receive enough aid to make it, for them, doable even if it entails some debt. If you don’t qualify for the FA, your family is in the upper percentiles of earners, and you’re expected to have the resources to pay. Quit whining about America. Despite being (on paper at least) well-to-do, you would be eligible for significant FA at many schools in the US. You just chose not to apply to those schools, dismissing them as inferior. That’s sort of your problem, not America’s.