<p><img src="https://static5.businessinsider.com/image/60118e7b1d2df20018b711aa-1874/GettyImages-128387975.jpg" border="0" alt="college graduation grads" data-mce-source="Barry Winiker/Getty Images"></p><p></p><bi-shortcode id="summary-shortcode" data-type="summary-shortcode" class="mceNonEditable" contenteditable="false">Summary List Placement</bi-shortcode><ul class="summary-list"><li>College is priced similarly to airline seats, writes New York Times columnist Ron Lieber in his new book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Price-You-Pay-College-Financial/dp/006286730X'&linkCode=ll1&tag=bipfi_012721_college-tuition-costs-priced-like-airplane-seats-20&linkId=98bad628d5f01f4950aeee6a34bcd72c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored">The Price You Pay for College</a>."</li><li>While costs of attendance have risen, scholarships and student awards have risen, too.</li><li>Costs are based on a number of factors, including things students can and can't control.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Personal Finance Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Any frequent traveler has looked for a flight and found the perfect one, only to refresh the page later to find the same seat at a higher price. Ticket prices are constantly changing, and someone else could have well bought the same ticket for less, or even far more.</p><p>In some ways, that's a lot like the experience of getting intoand paying forcollege.</p><p>New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber explains this in his new book,<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Price-You-Pay-College-Financial/dp/006286730X'&linkCode=ll1&tag=bipfi_012721_college-tuition-costs-priced-like-airplane-seats-20&linkId=98bad628d5f01f4950aeee6a34bcd72c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow sponsored">"The Price You Pay For College."</a> While college entrance has been a stressful and expensive life event for years, it's gotten more complicated in the past several years as colleges have started offering more aid and the cost of tuition has risen.</p><p>"Classrooms at public institutions ... have become more like airplane cabins, where people often pay many different amounts via extensive menus of possible prices," he writes in an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/business/financial-aid-college-merit-aid.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">excerpt adapted for The New York Times.</a></p><h2>The stated cost of attendance has become almost irrelevant</h2><p>Like airline ticketing, the cost of a seat varies based on a number of different factorsincluding how many times the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/clear-cooking-when-searching-for-flights-online-2015-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">airline detects you've checked the price on a browser</a>. Similarly, some people don't pay for the ticket at all, booking the ticket with points from a credit card. Still others buy main cabin tickets and get an upgrade to first class, seemingly on luck alone.</p><p>In some ways, Lieber posits, college tuition is similar.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-college-so-expensive-2018-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuition has more than doubled since the 1980s</a>, and it's likely to rise with increasing demand, a lack of state funding, and, ironically, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/college-expensive-most-students-dont-pay-full-cost" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increased student aid</a>.</p><p>As Paul Tough reports for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/college-admissions-paul-tough.html'mtrref=undefined&assetType=REGIWALL%5C" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New York Times Magazine</a>, "89% of students receive some form of financial aid, meaning that almost no one is paying full price."</p><p>And while that means scholarships and financial aid have become commonplace, it doesn't make calculating the total amount a school could cost any less complicated.</p><p>As Lieber writes for The New York Times, "It's not a scholarship as much as it is a coupon in many cases, one whose value may depend on applicants' traits ranging from their ZIP code (which can signal affluence) to how quickly they open an email invitation."</p><div><script async type="text/javascript" id="myFinance-widget-script">!function(){function e(){var e=document.createElement("script"),n=document.getElementById("myFinance-widget-script"),a=t+"static/widget/myFinance.js";e.type="text/javascript",e.async=!0,e.src=a,n.parentNode.insertBefore(e,n);var c="myFinance-widget-css";if(!document.getElementById(c)){var d=document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0],i=document.createElement("link");i.id=c,i.rel="stylesheet",i.type="text/css",i.href=t+"static/widget/myFinance.css",i.media="all",d.appendChild(i)}}var t="https://www.myfinance.com/";document.attachEvent'document.attachEvent("onreadystatechange",function(){"complete"===document.readyState&&e()}):document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",e,!1)}();</script><div class="myFinance-widget" data-widget-id="b2f6c543-3be9-417e-ab6c-caceb37e0dfc" data-campaign="bi-sloan-refi-multi"></div></div><h2>There are some parts of the equation you can control</h2><p>While there are a number of pieces of the college cost equation that students can't control, there are a number that families can.</p><p>"Grades and curricular choicesunlike ZIP codes or other demographic informationare something that is mostly within a teenager's control," Lieber writes.</p><p>And, he notes, families have found that they're able to simply ask for more and receive it. Personally, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/negotiate-college-financial-aid-save-money-2020-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asking for more aid worked for me.</a> Before starting my freshman year of college in 2014, asking for more aid brought the cost of my dream, out-of-state private school down to about the same amount I would have paid to attend one of Ohio's public schools.</p><p>And, of course, grades and test scores are still important, too. Having the discussion about high school grades and college plans, Lieber writes, should probably start happening as early as eighth grade.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-college-tuition" target="_blank" rel="noopener">average cost of college has risen about 8%</a> over the past five years, according to data from CollegeBoard gathered by Insider. And while aid amounts have also risen, it doesn't negate the fact that families are still burdened with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-crisis-college-cost-mind-blowing-facts-2019-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more student loan debt than ever before</a>.</p><bi-shortcode id="related-content-module" class="mceNonEditable" data-type="more-personal-finance-coverage" data-sheetname="More Personal Finance Coverage">Related Content Module: More Personal Finance Coverage</bi-shortcode><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/college-tuition-costs-priced-like-airplane-seats-2021-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story »</a></p>
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