Tuition and fees at public colleges soared a record 14 percent this year, continuing a quarter-century trend of higher-education prices rocketing faster than inflation. And the average total cost of attending a private school jumped to $26,854 - far beyond the reach of most American families. The size of federal grants to students has not kept up with rising prices, and state appropriations to colleges have not kept up with burgeoning enrollments. Colleges have asked for increased government spending on higher education, but Republican congressional leaders say colleges are wasting money and are considering penalizing schools that hike prices. To cope with the financial crunch, more and more colleges are turning to innovative uses of technology to reduce their costs.

Tom Price is a Washington-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for CQ Researcher. Previously he was a correspondent in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau and chief politics writer for the Dayton Daily News and The Journal Herald. His most recent book, written with former congressman and ambassador Tony Hall, is Changing The Face of Hunger: One Man's Story of How Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and People of Faith Are Joining Forces to Help the Hungry, the Poor, and the Oppressed. He is the author of two Washington guidebooks, Washington, D.C., for Dummies, and the Irreverent Guide to Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Rolling Stone and other periodicals. He earned a bachelor of science in journalism at Ohio University.