Living
Most Colleges Don't Tell Students the True Cost of an Education
More than 90% of financial aid letters either understate the net price of attendance or don’t include it at all.
This article is for subscribers only.
Halid Hamadi was determined to get his bachelor’s degree from Penn State, even though he had less than $7,000 in financial aid and no support from his parents. He crunched the numbers and figured he could make it work — barely.
But the financial aid letter he received from the college failed to paint a complete picture. Hamadi didn’t realize the tuition cost he was quoted could change from year to year. He said it also wasn’t clear that some estimated costs of attendance, like on-campus housing, weren’t guaranteed, while other costs weren’t included at all. The end result? An unfinished degree and $120,000 in student debt.