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College tuitions have skyrocketed - rising twice as fast as inflation since 1980 - causing students and their families increasing concern about how to meet these costs. This guide takes families and policymakers through the maze of college financing by explaining the pressures leading to the development of new financing plans and by examining the various options that exist for financing. Family incomes and government student aid programs have not kept pace with the rapid increases in tuition and other charges. In addition, the declining size of the traditional college age group, some lessening in the belief that parents should pay for their children's college education, and the lack of progress in increasing the number of low-income and minority students in schools all raise disturbing questions about the future financing of American higher education. Arthur Hauptman explains that federal and state governments, colleges and universities, as well as philanthropy and the private sector have responded to these,trends by developing a number of innovative financing plans aiming at closing the gap between what colleges charge and what students can pay. Hauptman describes the trends that have stimulated growing demand for finacning plans that go beyond existing student aid programs. He examines the issues raised by the new propsals for tuition prepayment, guarantees, and savings; evaluates the new versions of the traditional student aid programs of grants, loans, and work-study; and discusses the objectives and criteria policymakers should use in deciding whether to develop an innovative plan and which type of plan to use. He concludes with an overview of the kind of system that should emergein the future and how the new appraoches should fit into the traditional system of student aid.