[rhino369]

You pretty much do get a piece of paper that says you borrow X dollars.

One problem is you get one piece of paper each year for 5 years. The total amount sneaks up on kids.

If they had to see an estimated borrowing amount for the total degree, they might do things differently.

Especially since families tend to blow their wad the first year. Use their small savings to pay for the freshman year and then all the sudden there is no money for two.

[dragandj]

Wait a minute, we are talking about college age, not about 6 year olds. How difficult it is multiplying x with 4? It is not a precise amount, but if the parents have $10,000 and x is 8.000, how hard is it to figure out upfront that college is going to cost a LOT more than that?