[The_Reader_David]

This is a non-starter. Fancy schools don’t charge everyone rack-rate. If you’ve got good enough grades and are ‘interesting enough’, the fancy school pays most of the bill themselves.

My daughter went to Mount Holyoke College, which has a rack rate comparable to the Ivys, and we paid about as much as it would have cost to send her to the local state U. She had a heap of college credit earned during HS, a high GPA, and came from a ‘big square state’.

Obama, with a Kenyan father, sojourn in Indonesia, and so forth would have gotten Columbia to pay most of the cost of his attendance out of income on their endowment; Harvard Law probably threw a fat financial aid package his way, as well.

[Godwin1]

There is some indication—two trips to Pakistan—that Obama financed himself at Columbia by dealing in drugs. We know—because he told us in his book—that he USED during college. At the time Obama was in college,Pakistan was an important source of heroin destined for Europe and the USA.
Pakistan is a long ways away. One had to go through London. Do you know any young Americans who traveled TWICE to Pakistan while in college? Obama could have paid in another way, of course. But since he won't tell us, Pakistan/heroin is a good possibility.