>>>Plus, financial aid is need-based; they will meet demonstrated need. At least half of them (including UPenn, my alma mater) now use grants-only financial aid, as well. So while it's not quite a free ride--you are expected to pay some portion based on savings and family income, an Ivy or comparable can actually be cheaper than a state school.
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>I was imagining a future in which university endowment funds continue to grow such that tuition fees no longer are required at all, or at least can return to the inflation-adjusted costs in the 1970s and 1980s. E.g. check out Harvard: their "low" 15.4% on their endowment fund last year still yields about $230K per year per student, plus billions more pouring in from the alumni. It could reach $500K/year per student by 2020. What are the tuition fees for again?

FWIW, fifteen-ish years ago, when my older son was at Amherst (not an Ivy, but in that class qualitatively), and tuition + room and board was running $35K+ per year, the president of the college, in speaking to parents on Parents Weekend, said that even for students whose families were paying the whole thing, the college was still subsidizing their education to the tune of about $50K per year. That is, their cost per student per annum was around $85K. Now, Amherst's case is a little unusual because they're located out in Western Massachusetts, at least 2 hours from the nearest big city, and they pay a premium on faculty salaries because of it. OTOH, my sense is that in fact, pretty much all these top tier schools are spending more per student per year than they're charging.

As this conversation has pointed out, working one's way through college is less possible now than in several generations. (My mom, an orphan, was able to do so 60+ years ago, with the help of her older sisters, and despite an uncle who stole a summer's worth of earnings from her.) I applaud the schools who are making efforts to be open to more students from more backgrounds by adjusting approaches to payment.

Tamar