Jeremy Hyman, a longtime college educator and co-author of Professors’ Guide: The Secrets of College Success, said simply seeing an estimated tuition price listed on a university’s website can turn students away, sure that they can’t pay $20,000 a year.
“Sometimes they’re so overwhelmed they go straight to community college,” where prices are usually listed by the course, appearing far more manageable, Hyman said. “And that’s really unfortunate in a lot of cases.”
When financial aid is factored into college costs, Hyman said, students are often surprised that they – and their parents – won’t have to break the bank.
“They don’t usually know how much they’ll be on the hook for” before factoring in assistance, he said.
Anderson said his years as a financial planner – often working with parents who began saving for college when their child entered high school – showed that “about 90 percent” of parents “had no idea what to anticipate” about college tuition and fees.
Conducting endless internet searches for college prices and accurate projections, Anderson said, can lead to an information overload that leaves parents and students more confused about tuition costs than before they did any research.
“Seeing too much information is … just as bad as having no information available to you at all,” he said.
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