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Both of my daughters had AP credits, and some college credit course work they did in their Honors classes at the Catholic HS they both attended. My eldest daughter could have graduated after the first semester in her senior yr., but she was a music major and had some courses towards her major that she needed to complete. My youngest is set to graduate after the first semester in her senior year. These AP and honors credit courses really help with the costs of college, and my youngest is attending a state school and it is still outrageous.

Here in Washington State, they had an article in the local (soon to be deceased) Seattle paper about a month or so ago saying that the State was looking to allow the state colleges to raise their tuitions as much as 16%.

I love when the politicians tell you they are going to make college more "affordable"; but the way they do that is to allow you to go deeper into debt. It is never to look at why the cost of college is going up so much faster than the cost of living.

Rises in tuition tend to correlate with the amount of federal aid offered to students in terms of loans and grants. Whenever government increases help to the students, the universities increase the cost so the students end up in the same relative spot, except further in debt in the case of loans. Universities would be offended if they were expected to track CPI increases. They are, after all, “not one of those scrubby businesses” but something infinitely higher and inspired. (I used to work at a university as an administrator, believe me, that opinion is widespread. A down-to-earth professor now administrator once commented to me that as far as universities are concerned, the French Revolution never occurred.)

In addition to aid influencing tuition, there is the trend for the schools to serve as post-high schools, teaching the kids things they should have learned in high school. A whole lot of courses now are remedial and essentially waste the time and money of universities. Add to that the burgeoning number of students who come on grants and scholarships for political correctness purposes, add to that the probable lack of donations by the few that actually get degrees, the common practice of students taking five, six, seven or more years to get a Bachelor’s degree, and costs skyrocket. Then add in the pre-French Revolution notion that the really “good” professors shouldn’t have to sully themselves to actually teach more than one class a semester and, if the administrators don’t agree, said professor will decamp to another university.

They have placed themselves in a trap and are expecting you, the non-needs-based parent to bear the cost of not just your offspring but all those who aren’t paying full price. Incidentally, this is why a lot of foreign students are at universities: not because of diversity or giving them a chance to access the U.S. education system but because they pay full tuition most of the time.