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Tom Sowell nailed such schemes years ago.

Colleges and universities have followed a pricing policy common in many industries by establishing an unrealistically high list price and then offering varying discounts, according to what the traffic will bear. No one seriously expects to pay list prices for automobiles, television sets, computers, or cameras _ and most people do not pay the list price to attend high-priced institutions like M.I.T., Harvard, or Yale. In academia, the list price is called "tuition" and the discounts are called "financial aid." A majority of the students at the priciest colleges receive so-called "financial aid" _ which is to say, they do not pay the list price... It is not a question of needy students but of greedy institutions. Charging a sliding scale of tuition enables them to extract from each family the most that the traffic will bear. Thomas Sowell column (Sep. 21, 1992).