Financial aid puts college in reach in a couple of ways. Scholarships, a big slice of the financial aid pie, really amount to discounting tuition, fees, and room and board. These days, few students actually pay full price for their educations -- most institutions offer a smorgasbord of need- and merit-based aid. The College Board estimates that for the 2006-2007 school year, about three-quarters of college students received some sort of scholarship help. In the end, this means that the published tuition number doesn't mean an awful lot for the majority of students.

"With the high-tuition, high-aid model, you've got these colleges that have a discount rate of 30 (percent), 40 (percent), 50 percent. It makes their tuition not what it seems," says Doug Lederman, editor of Inside Higher Ed.

Why charge high tuition only to discount it later? "It's about competition," says Tornow. "The merit-based aid is used for two purposes: to bring in the most academically attractive students to improve (the school's) profile; and the other is to bring in lower-income students."

Loans now create risk later
The second and far more troublesome part of the financial aid apparatus is loans. A 2007 study by the Project on Student Debt found that almost two-thirds of students are graduating with some amount of debt. In fact, they peg the average for 2006 graduating seniors at more than $19,000 in public and private loans. Student borrowing has grown so much that students routinely exceed the debt limit for federally guaranteed loans and end up seeking private loans, which can have stratospherically high rates, especially for those with iffy credit. And the kicker is, if students do get in over their head in debt, it's almost impossible to discharge that debt through bankruptcy due to the way bankruptcy law is written.

"As people borrow large sums of money at relatively high rates of interest, I think they increasingly put themselves at severe financial risk," says Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. So how can this 50-year marathon of tuition hikes end? Thankfully, a number of trends may soon conspire to give some relief to American families.

Demographics may soon lend a hand. The pool of graduates coming out of America's high schools will soon shrink. According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, after over a decade of steady growth, the number of graduating seniors will peak this year and then fall steadily until the 2013-2014 school year.

"As the population decreases, the competition is going to get ramped up," says Lederman. And increased competition may spell lower tuition, or at least a slowing in the rise of college costs.

Effect of online colleges
The rise of for-profit colleges and online programs should also have an affect on tuition in the future. It was probably inevitable that venture capitalists and Wall Street would notice the billion-dollar higher-education market -- and the billions in federally guaranteed loans going there.

As a result, for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix have been rapidly expanding over the last decade, despite problems with accreditation and a belief among many in the educational establishment, well-founded or not, that their profit margins come at the expense of their quality of education.

"I think in the long run, more competition always helps keep prices under control, and I think the for-profits being focused on being very cost-conscious will have a positive effect on moderating price increases in higher ed," says Vedder.

The number of accredited online university programs has also exploded in the last decade. These programs have the advantage of being the ultimate commuter schools -- their enrollment is totally independent of geography. And the fact that physical facilities are not needed means their tuition can come in at a significant discount to what you would pay to sit in a traditional classroom.