I think the opinion you get about college is probably based on each person's own situation. My parents didn't save much for college, but it was at a time when college was around $10k/year, so I was able to save up from summer jobs for around half of it, the other half student loans, a bit of help from my parents as well as we were not struggling, but they put their retirement needs ahead of mine. Ate a lot of Ramen in college, but graduated w/loans that were manageable. DW wasn't as well off so had to finance most of it and worked 20-30 hours/week during school and summers/winters, so she struggled, ate a lot more Ramen and had the stress of bills to pay while in college, which was not ideal. I think somewhere in the middle is right, you want your kids to have skin in the game, otherwise what are you paying for?
We have 529 accounts for our 3 sons and are on track to fund most of college based on inflation and investment, but we don't tell them how much there is, and probably won't. We tell them how expensive college is, if they do stuff around the house or I want to do silly things w/them I'll say stuff like "if you can do a pullup I'll put $5 in your college account". It's fun for me, I'm doing it anyways and it puts college on their brain. I tell my kids that "whatever money you make in scholarships, I'll match it" and that seems to get them excited. Even if we have enough to fully fund college, I want them to put money in via scholarships, Summer jobs, possibly working in school, etc.
There are a ton of non-traditional options as well, ROTC, 2 years of junior college, etc. Financially I think there are a lot of easy but non-traditional routes that can work, but many (including me) want their kids to have the college experience. My boys will go to state school, if they want to go somewhere else they'll pay the delta, if they are screw ups in high school I won't pay for state school, they can go to junior college to figure out what they want to do w/their life.
I want to make sure my boys don't have a free ride, but want the emphasis to be on school. They should be working over summers to contribute, I don't want to pay $100k so they can enjoy going on benders during the week away from home though, so each family I think just has to balance what they want.