A family shopping for college today knows more about the cost of a mortgage than the real price of a college degree. That confusion isn’t only a technical problem inside financial aid offices. It’s a public trust problem for higher education.
This problem isn’t new. In 1998, the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education, created by the U.S. Congress, issued a report titled“Straight Talk About College Costs and Prices.” I served as its executive director. It warned that colleges had allowed “a veil of obscurity” to settle over their financial operations. It cautioned that continued inattention would create “a gulf of ill will” between higher education and the public it serves.
More than a quarter-century later, that warning is less a prediction than a diagnosis.
Yes, colleges publish tuitions, offer online calculators and send financial aid letters. Yet too often, the answer to a family’s simplest question about what college will cost arrives late and varies by institution. It’s also wrapped in language that blurs the difference between free money, borrowed money, campus jobs, parent loans and the amount the family must pay.
