<p>I predicted many years ago, when my oldest was going to college and we were choking on his costs, that the prices could not go much higher except at the very top schools where folks are willing to cut of their right arm to get to send their kids. Maybe it is starting to happen, but not at the pace I had thought it would. College costs have galloped even higher than projected even as savings and interest/returns in savings have plummented. And yet schools that cost close to $60K a year are still accepting at less than 50%. </p>
<p>However, I am hearing through the grapevine that “summer melt” figures are pretty danged high. I do not envy the admissions people these days. People are applying to many, many more schools and a lot of the data that admissions uses is dated, given the number of apps that the average student who applies to competitive colleges, submits. I understand there has been a lot of "horse trading’ with the waitlist these days, and some unusual deal that colleges are offering, like “you are accepted but you come in the spring” or “you must go abroad this term to be accepted”, or guaranteed transfer admissions with a B average at your accepted college. Given how the economy and job situation has been, it’s been remarkable to me that these colleges are STILL INCREASING PRICES and still enjoying some selective accept rates. So if my prediction is true, and there are signs that it is happening, it is a very slow process, shored up by the availability of student loans on terms that no lender would give money to anyone for any other reason. </p>
<p>As for living like you make $60K when you make $90K, even if you stuff that extra after taxes and other costs associated to making the higher amount, under your mattress and get zip in interest and returns, you will be doing very well in a few years, not only in college costs but for a lot of other things in life. Americans are simply not saving. I saw the Time or Newsweek stat on what we are saving as individuals/families in this country, and even if it is way off, it cannot be off enough.</p>
<p>As for families who are making low 6 figures, if you had lived like those families who are getting a lot of financial aid due to low income/low assets, but had just stuffed the excess under your mattress, you wouldn’t need the financial aid. Plus you’d have the flexibility of spending the money on what you want. That is what you are being “charged” for in the financial aid process–you could have been saving that money whereas the low income family never had it to save.</p>
<p>The big failure, of the financial aid system, of course, is the snap shot nature of it that assumes that every family has been making money in a certain way, so that those who just got a great windfall of a job paying $90K are treated in terms of past earnings assumptions, the same way that someone who has been making that amount or working slowly up to it over the years. But still, that does cover most people. </p>
<p>The process is not going to be fair, no matter what. How anyone can make it fair, is beyond me. The top schools with the top prices tend to be private and they can spend their money anyway they want. I don’t hear parents crying that they can’t afford to send their darling genius stuck in the local school system that is not close to meeting his needs, to Phillips Academy in Andover or Exeter or Choate Rosemary Hall. Why is it that at age 18 the University of Vermont is not good enough for your kid, when you had him in the public podunk schools for 12 years? No reason why he can’t go to the state schools and earn a paid spot for graduate school. It tends to be a more level playing field then as even the more affluent parents can’t or won’t pay for post UG education.</p>