Cost of College

Many schools’ financial-aid letters are devilishly difficult to figure out. Here’s what you need to know. Many high school seniors face the challenge of evaluating college acceptance and financial-aid offers, but colleges use non-uniform language in their aid packages, making comparison difficult. Only a fraction adopt the U.S. Department of Education’s standardized “Financial Aid Shopping Sheet”. College costs go beyond tuition and fees; they include transportation, textbooks, and living expenses. Some colleges may provide more generous grants to freshmen but reduce them for upperclassmen....

Most people assume a degree in the arts is no guarantee of riches. Now there is evidence that such graduates also rack up the most student-loan debt. Graduates from arts-focused schools accrue the highest student-loan debt, with a median debt load of $21,576, and often have starting salaries around $40,000. Our analysis of Department of Education data found that research university graduates typically have less student loan debt than those from liberal-arts colleges: $18,100 versus $19,445, respectively....

Rising college costs and a sagging economy are taking the biggest toll on a surprising group: upper-middle-income families. Read the full story here.