Colleges Are Unaffordable For Most Americans - Kim Clark, Time/Money

The vast majority of colleges are unaffordable for working-, middle- and upper-middle class students who don’t want to borrow, a new study has found. And even if students are willing to take out the maximum federal student loans, at least 70% of colleges are unaffordable for working and middle class students, according to an analysis by the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Using a benchmark created by the Lumina Foundation, which funded the study, IHEP called a college “affordable” if the net price (total cost after grants and scholarships were subtracted) could be paid by a student working 10 hours a week during the school year, and a family who had put aside in a college savings account 10% of their disposable income for 10 years. Families earning less than about $50,000 were assumed to have no disposable income, and, thus no college savings. http://time.com/money/4712609/colleges-unaffordable/