This spring brought the annual wave of prospective students to colleges nationwide, with young people and their parents eager to learn about majors and campus life. Unfortunately, the most important issue of all — the cost of college — was too often omitted from those conversations.

Confusion about what a college education will cost any given family is creating a disheartening landscape, especially for working- and middle-class families who may not have been made aware of how much financial aid they could be eligible for. This challenge is compounded by renewed efforts from the Trump administration to tax endowments and cut research funding, restricting revenue sources that help make college more affordable.

Headlines often spotlight $100,000 sticker prices at elite private colleges. But even flagship public universities are increasingly — and understandably — seen as financially out of reach. “Everyone I went to high school with either went to Tech or UFS,” one rural Arkansas student told a researcher, referring to Arkansas Tech University and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. “Nobody really went to Fayetteville because they thought, ‘I can’t afford that. I’m not uppity.’”

For many families, the actual price of a college education remains unclear, buried beneath complex formulas and inconsistent messaging. As doubts about affordability grow, so too does the sense that the lofty promise of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Higher Education Act — to make college broadly accessible through meaningful financial aid — has fallen short.

A 2025 survey by the Lumina Foundation, which is focused on accessibility in higher education, in partnership with Gallup, found that a mere 18 percent of Americans without a college degree believe four-year college tuition is “fair.” Nearly a third of Americans think college “isn’t worth the cost,” and another 47 percent believe it is worth the cost only if a student does not need any loans, according to the Pew Research Center.

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