Why College Affordability Is So Difficult to Define
When Gavin Flood started looking at colleges, he wasn’t thinking much about how they might stack up financially. He was still figuring out his own preferences. Did he want to attend a big college or a small one? Study medicine, or political science? But as college has drawn closer for Gavin, a high-school senior, his parents have included the 17-year-old in more conversations about paying for it. "College is just a big financial step for us," he says. Gavin and his younger sister go to Allendale Columbia School, a private school in Rochester, N.Y. Gavin receives a partial scholarship, but even so, paying for private school has cut into the family’s college savings, says his mother, Jane Laskey.