Universities Weblog

Paying for college may be getting even more difficult. It's the choice of an older generation: pay your own way, kids!

More and more students are facing the tremendous financial strain of higher education on their own these days, with no financial support from their parents.

As the first person in my entire family to ever attend college, I paid my own way, because my parents couldn't afford it, not because they didn't want to help.

These days, even parents who make more than $100,000 a year are telling their children that as far as college goes, the kids are on their own.

"What I've really seen in the last 10 years is a generational shifting of the responsibility" to pay for college, said Ellen Frishberg, director of student financial services at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Our parents helped us pay for school. These parents are not as willing to help their children pay for school."

Surprisingly, this trend is not apparent at the most elite, expensive schools, such as Harvard and Yale. Experts theorize that parents may see those schools as "worth the price."

But what about the millions of students who attend other, always expensive, colleges? Are they doomed to a future of paying off huge Student Loans?