All this talk about college costs has me scared. My kids are 8 and 10, and we try to put away a little bit each month for their college savings....but at the rate of "education inflation" we will be lucky to have saved up enough to cover their first year's tuition by the time they are 18.

In the old old days, there was this expression called "working your way through college" whereby a decent summer job could yield enough money to pay for a full year at college. Those days are over, long over.