college costs

Oct. 29 is the deadline for U.S. colleges to put "net price calculators" on their websites -- tools intended to estimate the real cost of attending for each specific student. But the most widely adopted calculator is inaccurate -- to the tune of thousands of dollars, experts say.

When students drop out of college, it's not just disappointing for them and their parents -- it's also bad news for Uncle Sam, and even for their next-door neighbors. According to a new report, a single year's worth of dropouts cost the nation $4.5 billion in lost income, and lost federal and state income taxes.

It's one thing to use Photoshop to make your waistline look slimmer in your snapshots. Many people also take a distorted view of their finances, fooling themselves about the health of their balance sheets. Here are some common self-deceptions.

Worried about how to pay for college? The Princeton Review this week released its financial-aid ratings for more than 600 U.S. colleges. Find out which ones came out on top.

With college costs rising, it's more important than ever for students to be financially savvy. Here are 15 things you need to know to graduate with a bank account at the top of your class.

Putting kids through college is something most parents expect will cost a bundle -- and it does. Just take a look at the Department of Education's College Affordability and Transparency website, which gives the lowdown on the costs, as well as trends in tuition rates. It's not a pretty picture.

During an impromptu drop-in at a conference of personal finance writers, President Obama was asked: How does he approach his own household finances? His response was timeless, irrefutable, and not quite consistent with his prescription for the federal government.

Comparison shopping is available online for almost everything -- cars, shoes, books and cereal. Why not college? Soon it will be. The federal government requires all colleges to have net price calculators, or NPCs, on their websites by October. The calculators are meant to provide a reliable...

On a recent Today Show Money 911 segment, a caller said she'd filed for bankruptcy -- but that didn't free her from her student loans. She then asked how bankruptcy would affect her ability to get more student loans. Clearly, she isn't learning the right lesson from Chapter 11.

A new study by the nonprofit American Institutes for Research set out to tally the costs associated with freshman students who don't return to the college where they initially enrolled. It found that taxpayers foot a pretty steep bill.