Giving Up College Dreams

For many middle class families, the price of enrolling their children in college is becoming too expensive to afford. Kelly Wallace has more on the question of affordability.

19-year-old Vanessa Massarotti was accepted at her top choice private four-year university, but for economic reasons, had to enroll instead in Brookdale Community college.

Financially，I have brother and sister in college also， so, it was really hard, so, we'd just stand up and come to Brookdale, save money.

Like Vanessa, more students may be squeezed out of their dream school or college in general for a public four-year-college; tuition has skyrocketed from $1,600 20 years ago to nearly 7,000 now, for a private school, from 8,000 to 25,000 dollars.

For a long time, we just thought about they are poor, but now many middle class students can’t go. The tuition is just too high. A new education report card found that families making less than 19,000 dollars a year doled out 39% of their income on public college cost in 1999, that number jumped to a whopping 55% in 2007.

The share for middle class families making less than 90,000 dollars also climbed from 18 to a hefty 25%. While families making more than 90,000 saw the lowest increase, form 7 to 9%. And the problem is only likely to get worse, historically education experts say during tough economic times, states tend to cut college budgets which sends tuitions out.

I think it’s gonna be very interesting to see if states, that have relatively high instate tuitions, if they’re not gonna lose students to other states that have lower costs.

I knew money is still always gonna be an issue.

Vanessa’s college dream ultimately will be determined by her family’s bottom line. Kelly Waller, CBS news, New York.