College: More Expensive than Ever

Awesome, college tuition is climbing at a faster clip than the availability of financial aid, putting a degree further out of reach for many Americans. The same is true for the traditionally less expensive online colleges.  
Have fun paying extra for that degree when you can't find a job thanks to the millions that have already been lost to the Recession.  Tuition and fees at private 4-year schools rose 4.4% and public 4-year universities are up 6% this year, according to a survey released by the College Board Tuesday.

(CNNMoney.com) - "We're in a very strong sellers market for higher education," said Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, who noted that the high school graduating class of 2009 was the largest in history.

"Colleges and universities are capitalizing on that more than any other institution in the economy. If you walk around a shopping mall, nobody else is raising prices at the same rate."
Tuition prices are going up at private schools at least in part because those schools have seen their endowments dwindle. Public schools are suffering from a dip in state funding, which declined 5.7% per student this year.

Less grant money. At the same time, the availability of financial aid isn't keeping up with these climbing costs. Grant funding grew only 4.7% in the 2008-2009 academic year, the most recent for which data is available, which means that undergraduates' out-of-pocket costs are higher than ever.

That, combined with higher unemployment and stagnant household incomes, is making it harder than ever to finance a degree.

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SOURCE: http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/19/pf/college_costs/?postversion=2009102011