A dirty secret of higher education is that few people actually pay the sticker price. A lot of people get some degree of funding via pseudo-automatic scholarshi

A dirty secret of higher education is that few people actually pay the sticker price. A lot of people get some degree of funding via pseudo-automatic scholarships. The government is heavily involved in the student loan industry. Consequently, the entire market is heavily distorted. One of the largest programs is the Direct/Stafford loan program [0]. Essentially the student (and only the student; no cosigners allowed) directly borrows money from the federal government at a fairly cheap interest rate (in the last decade [1], it has ranged from 3.4% to 5.05%). In some cases, the student is not liable for interest accrued while they're in school (see the following paragraph for details if you're interested). The loan limit is $31k for dependent students and $57.5k for independent students. There's two variants to direct loans: subsidized (where the government pays for the interest while the student is in school) and unsubsidized (no qualification necessary). Anyone can take out unsubsidized loans, limited to the COA (cost of attendance: the amount a college declares it would cost to attend; inclusive of tuition, fees, books, room & board, etc.). Anyone who's EFC (expected family contribution: the amount the government expects the student/their parents to pay annually based upon their income and assets) is less than COA can take out up to the shortfall in subsidized loans (but no more than the specified limit which varies by dependent-status and year in school). [0]: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsidized https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized... [1]: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-rates#older-rates https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r...