By the way, not that I’m necessarily advocating it, but one way to make the cost of college borrowing more affordable is to take out a HELOC, assuming you have sufficient equity in your house. The interest rate is lower because it’s a secured loan (the equivalent of a second mortgage), and in most cases the interest is tax-deductible (subject to certain limits; talk to your tax adviser). I’m sure many people are gun-shy about this after the recent crash in the housing market, and it’s likely a lot of people who used HELOCs to finance their kids’ college educations got burned pretty badly.But in the right circumstances, including an appreciating housing market and a clear plan to pay off the loan relatively quickly, it could be a sensible strategy to spread the cost of a college education over, say, 6 or 7 years of the parents’ earnings instead of 4.