COLLEGE COSTS can be daunting. A year at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst costs Massachusetts residents more than $17,000. A year at a private college can run more than $45,000. At those prices, some students fall into a tuition gap. Even with financial aid, they do not have enough money to pay all their college bills, according to a report from the state’s Board of Higher Education.

In Massachusetts, the average size of that gap is $4,500 — a cold reminder that having money matters.

Some wealthy schools provide relief. At Harvard, families with earnings of $60,000 or less are not asked to pay any of the bills.

Despite these efforts, the fact remains that college is expensive, and that discourages and deters students. And as Globe staff reporter Marcella Bombardieri wrote last month, unpaid college loans haunt students who lack the money to make payments, and those students may be hounded by collection agencies and further buried under punitive fees.

The board of education is calling for more help from the proverbial village: government, business, and foundations. Everyone would win if students studying nursing, science, and other high-demand fields got help paying off student loans. Companies could get tax credits for helping to pay off these debts.

In its fiscal 2008 budget request, the board seeks to expand the MassGrant program for low-income students by $154 million: $79 million would go to low-income students and another $75 million would extend the program to middle-income families earning up to $70,000. A modest request for $100,000 would fund a study of the task force’s recommendations for a student loan forgiveness program, and for offering a free community college education to eligible students.

The payoff could be huge. One test case is the Gates Millennium Scholars program. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the program paves a way to college for low-income minority students. They get “last dollar” scholarships to pay for costs that aren’t covered by other scholarships or grants. Students are not required to take out loans or get work-study jobs.

Compared with a national sample, the Millennium Scholars were more likely to go to selective colleges, more likely to complete college, and more likely to enroll in graduate school, according to an analysis done by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a non profit organization in Washington that promotes access to college. Even more telling: The scholars tended to have a lighter financial load, borrowing only about half as much in student loans as their peers.

Shielding students from big bills improves their shot at success in college and, later, in the workforce. This should be a Beacon Hill priority. Massachusetts has a lot of colleges. Now it needs more college affordability.

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Education, Financial Aid. Tags: College, College Loans, Education, Financial Aid, Grant, Loans, Scholarship, Student, Student Loan, Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.