“Regular readers know how valuable I find this easy financial-aid calculator for selective colleges. It shows that these colleges are much less expensive for middle-class and poor students than many of them — or their parents — imagine, thanks to financial aid.
At many top private colleges, lower-income students — from a family earning $50,000 or less, for example — face an annual bill of $6,000. Students can often cover that cost through part-time work and a small annual loan, without their parents having to pay more. It’s true that affluent and upper-middle-class students face much larger bills, but their parents tend to have incomes in the six figures and substantial savings. Paying for college isn’t fun for them, but it doesn’t require them to make major changes to their lifestyle — or require their children to take on enormous debt.
Today, the calculator — known as MyinTuition — is expanding to include 15 new colleges, bringing the total number to 46.”
Read more from New York Times Opinion Columnist David Leonhardt at https://nyti.ms/2znxT6J.
