Spotlight: Tamara Draut
By Cheryl Allebrand • Bankrate.com

Wondering why it's so difficult to save up money for college? Feeling buried under student loan debt? You're not the only one. Conditions for financing higher education have changed drastically in just one generation. Author, public policy researcher and college finance expert Tamara Draut describes the challenges college students and their parents face, how the financial aid system has changed and what's on the horizon.

At a glance Name: Tamara Draut Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y. Education: Columbia University, M.P.A. (Masters of Public Administration); Ohio University, B.S., Journalism Career highlights:     Director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a think tank, in New York   Author of "Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead"   Web site: Strappedthebook.com

Challenges to families

Can you put into context the funding challenges facing college students and their parents?

College tuition has been spiraling ever upward and has more than doubled in the last two decades and has grown by about 40 percent since the beginning of the new century. It's getting harder for your average family to afford to pay for college, which is one of the reasons you're seeing more students doing so by going into debt and working long hours during school.

A couple of things have changed in just one generation. The financial aid system hasn't responded to the rising need for aid and the rising costs of college, and in fact, federal financial aid has really fossilized. A generation ago young people could work a minimum-wage job to help pay for college. Work during the summer would pretty much cover their tuition for the year. Young people from lower-income backgrounds could actually get a grant that would cover about three-quarters of the cost of going to school.

Today most of the aid that's provided is debt-based aid, not grants, and that's really the big shift. Through the federal financial aid system we really don't help people afford the cost of college. We help them go into debt to pay for college.

Is it reasonable to expect to be able to save up for college?

Now you're talking about parents' ability. At the same time that all of this has been happening, you have the squeeze that has been slowly constricting your typical middle-class household, who is paying more for housing, health care, dealing with the need to save for their own retirement and at the same time trying to send their kids to college.

The typical cost of attendance at your public university today is about $12,000 per year, on average. There are a lot of pressures on parents' budgets today, so it has become more difficult.