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Investing:How Parents Are Thinking About Paying for College
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Parents Are Now Paying More Than Half of Their Kids’ College Costs

Students can thank their parents for saving, borrowing and spending their paychecks to help them get a degree.

    
Photographer: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

Parents in the U.S. are paying a larger percentage of their children’s higher-education expenses, even as costs for college dropped during the pandemic.

Through a combination of savings, borrowing and putting aside some of their current paychecks, parents are now footing about 54% of the bill for tuition, room, board and other expenses, according to a survey out this week from Sallie Mae, the student lender, and Ipsos, the polling company. That’s up 2 percentage points from the year before.