Ooops! A correction to my last post: The item purchased in 1968 would cost $16141.00

cabby05

You're quite correct. In fact, the scale that is used to determine which students get aid and how much, hasn't been adjusted for inflation in 40 years, according to a recently aired article on Public Radio. That means that middle income students are being squeezed even more unfairly than either the wealthy, whose parents can afford the most expensive colleges, or the poor, whose costs are subsidized to a higher degree than ever.

Another problem is to determine what, exactly, does it mean to be "wealthy?" The family that has a $100,000 annual income today has much lower purchasing power than a similar family 40 years ago. By today's standards, $100,000 isn't all that much. For example, an item bought for $100,000.00 in 2008, would have cost $14,378.48 in 1968, according to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve bank calculator.
The "middle class" might be growing, but it's not getting wealthier, but poorer.

I currently have a son in college & another son to start next year. We weren't able to save as much as we would have liked when the boys were younger due to job losses...and now we are faced with paying. We WILL find a way, but it's going to be tough. I don't think the wealthy should pay more, but I do think there should be more options for the middle class. My son wasn't even elligible for work study this year, we are hoping that they both will be next year.

Whybesad- government programs may pay for the poor but what about the middle income families? The ones who the government says that their families make to much to give aid to their kids but yet have a very hard time just getting by. I'm not saying we should have the better off people pay for lower income people but something needs to be changed.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
It appears Karl Marx isn't really dead, he's alive and well and running the UW Board of Regents. It's bad enough the campuses are socialist havens, now they're trying to apply the theory. Maybe we should use this same thinking to start adjusting the Regents' salaries.

Another attempt to have the well off people pay for the poor. There are enough government programs to have the poor students use to pay for college. It's not the wealthy students job to subsidize the poor. They already pay a higher tax rate.