What's the real cost of a college education?

Every college student learns one lesson quickly: College is expensive.

According to a report by the College Board released last year, the average annual cost at a four-year public college was $11,354 and a year at a private college was $27,516. And it certainly isn't any cheaper this year.

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Scholarships and grants don't make all the bills go away, either. Even after the average $3,300 in scholarships, a student at that four-year public school is looking at an annual tab of $8,054.

And after his private-school cousin gets her average of $9,400 in scholarships, she's still got $18,116 to shoulder.

"Students and parents are borrowing a significant amount of money," says Sandy Baum, senior policy analyst with the College Board.

In addition to federal education loans such as Stafford and PLUS, they are also turning to home equity loans and private lenders.

Karlyn Wegmann is one of those parents. Her oldest child entered a private college last fall but didn't qualify for any financial aid. "We were surprised because it's expensive, $36,000 a year," she says. "But then they told us that if you make over $125,000, you're not going to get anything."

Wegmann is a florist and grad student herself, and her husband is a pediatrician. They've lived in the same house 13 years. "We don't drive a big, fancy car and don't have a home on the lake or a cabin," she says. "I've never flown first-class and neither has my husband."

While they paid the first year out of savings, for sophomore year they're tapping the home equity. By the time their third child graduates, "there will be zero equity left in the house, it will have all been taken for tuition," she says. "And we have a lot of friends who are doing the same thing."

Students are getting loans, too. "Students are increasingly borrowing private loans through banks," says Baum.

Randa Chappin graduated from American University this spring. She commuted to school and estimates the full tuition was $25,000 to $30,000 per year. Financial aid took care of "about 70 percent," she says. For the rest, she did what a lot of students do: work. She combined jobs with work-study assignments and even took out one loan. "At one point I had three different jobs," she says.

Chappin lucked out, she says, by getting a really good financial aid adviser. Four years of mentoring from the DC College Access Program, or DC-CAP, "really helped me through my journey." Still, it took "a lot of persistence, a lot of determination."

Money shouldn't be a barrier
The real tragedy is that some low-income kids are passing on a college education simply because of the price.

"There is a portion of college-qualified, low-income graduates who are not going on to college or are delaying college because of the financial burden," says Nicole Barry, deputy director for the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. Each year, 400,000 low- and moderate-income high school grads who are qualified for college won't attend a four-year school within two years of graduating. Of those, about half won't attend any college at all within those two years, according to a 2002 report by the committee.

Of 100 low-income eighth-graders, 16 will be fully qualified to attend a four-year college but financially unable to do so, according to 2005 statistics from the committee.

And the situation has been getting worse, Barry says.