When my kid was getting ready to go to college, we went to all the FAFSA seminars and filled out all the forms and what not.

He got accepted by his top three schools, UC Davis, Lewis and Clark, and the University of Oregon Honors College.

Each one of them came back and told us the same thing…

“Well, with student assistance, scholarships, and so on, we think you should take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year.”

And my reaction was:

a) That’s oddly specific.

Followed by:

b) Wow, what are the chances that one out of state school and two in-state schools all commonly decided on the same oddly specific number?

Why it’s almost like it’s about “How much can we milk them for?” instead of “Here’s how much college costs.”

So we said “fuck that noise” and enrolled him as a normal student at the University of Oregon.

Tuition was $10,000 a year, he had a scholarship that paid $5,000, I ran the other $5,000 through my Amazon card for points, gave him a 2nd card for expenses and rent, and 4 years later he had a degree and 0 debt.

He’s now a data scientist in the AI field and paid me back in cash. LOL.

But I could see OTHER parents going “Well, three schools all told us $56,000 a year, I guess that’s just what school costs now…”