(Source: Bryn Mawr College)Paying for college isn't like buying a pair of shoes. If you want a $50 pair but can't afford them, the cashier won't accept $40 because you don't have enough money. You have to put them back and choose something cheaper. No, tuition charges are more like buying a car. The window sticker will include the MSRP, but most people don't pay that. They pay less, depending on a number of factors, including how shrewd they are as negotiators.



Colleges set tuition figures, and some students and families pay that amount. They can afford to. But most others don't. Students receive discounts---essentially tuition returned as financial aid---based on a number of merit and need factors.

Now the U.S. Department of Education wants policy makers to evaluate educational costs based on net prices, not sticker prices. Here's how Inside Higher Ed discusses it:

For several years, some experts on college financial aid have sought to change the conversation about college prices, arguing that sky-is-falling rhetoric about skyrocketing tuition exaggerates the extent of the problem. To understand the real pain for students and families, they have argued, "net price" (what colleges charge students to attend minus the amount of financial aid the students receive) provides a clearer picture of what a higher education actually costs --- and tends to make the situation look less dire.

The argument can seem self-serving when it comes from college officials themselves. But a report released Monday by the U.S. Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics generally endorses the view that policy makers should use net prices, not just sticker prices, in assessing students' higher education costs --- and shows that the median net price paid by first-time freshmen from 1999 to 2002 rose at a significantly slower pace than did the median price of attendance for students at all types of institutions.

But that doesn't mean celebration is in order: Even the increases in net prices outpaced inflation during that period, and the picture for students is likely to have worsened in the last few years because the amount of available grant aid has grown at a slower pace than it had previously. [....]

The NCES report, "Changes in Patterns of Prices and Financial Aid," acknowledges its limitations. It notes, first and foremost, that it focuses on what different types of institutions charge their students, not what different types of students pay. So it doesn't, for instance, provide any sense of whether colleges are treating students from low-income families differently from those with high incomes. The report also focuses on data for full-time, degree seeking freshmen, who represent 87 percent of all students at private nonprofit institutions but only 12 percent of students at public two-year colleges.You can read the full article here.