&gt; When a majority of students are on financial aid ...<p>A bit of a tangent: It also depends on how financial aid is defined. Many schools set an arbitrary price that very few students actually pay, the equivalent of a &#x27;manufacturers suggested retail price&#x27;. In one NY Times story on this topic, at the school they looked into around 1% (IIRC) paid the MSRP; everyone else got a &#x27;discount&#x27;, the same trick salespeople have used forever.<p>I&#x27;ve had people applying to college happily tell me, &#x27;the school offered me $30K in financial aid&#x27;. I try to (gently) tell them that it doesn&#x27;t matter how much &#x27;discount&#x27; the school offers, it matters how much they charge you. They can arbitrarily set their &#x27;MSRP&#x27; at $100K and give you $80K in &#x27;aid&#x27;, or set it at $20K and give you no &#x27;aid&#x27;; the result is the same.