How does paying for college work?

So I’m currently in the process of hearing back from colleges I applied to. My father attended three years of college on a full ride and my mother only attended community college for one year, so neither one of them knew much about paying for college. We all thought that you could pay whatever and take out loans and then the rest is debt on the student. However, it turns out that it doesn’t look like that’s the case as they found out something like how you can’t go into debt for this and whatever loans you can take out is it. My parents make roughly $170k a year and they’re only giving me $10k per year. I really want to go out of state for college, but after finding this news out, it might be impossible for me to go to my dream school: CU Boulder, which would be $40,000 a year due to my Presidential Scholarship from them. Is what I’m hearing true and that if my parents won’t be willing to pay off that much, it will be impossible for me to attend that college?