^ definitely agree. what ends up happening is that a doughnut hole is created. Many admitted students from comfortably well-off but not rich families end up choosing to attend honors programs of good but less competitive schools over Penn and other top schools because of merit aid… And that is the good case scenario. The bad case scenario is that some of these families take on debt because the don’t want to pass on the opportunity of sending their kid to a prestigious school.
I do wonder when this upward trend will stop. If higher ed tuition keeps going up like this for elite colleges, in a decade or so the cost will be $100,000. Especially the Ivies, Stanford,MIT know that people will remain willing to shell out big time to send their kids there, even go into debt to do so, so they are not going to change their ways any time soon. And the middle class gets screwed as a result.