Are top-tier private colleges worth the price of admission?

Let's see if I've got this right: Be glad we were kicked in the shins because we might have been kicked in the teeth.

That's the key message in an annual report last week by the College Board.

It said tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose 6.3 percent this year, about twice the inflation rate.

But, happily, that was a smaller increase than in many recent years, the report said. Costs at four-year private schools also rose faster than inflation, as did those at two-year schools.

This brought to mind three of my own experiences: At a college reunion a few years ago, I asked a classmate -- who by then was one of the school's trustees -- why charges went up faster than inflation.

Her first response was silence, then she admitted she didn't know. Apparently, the trustees didn't spend much time worrying about it.

Last spring I took a week to show a 17-year-old nephew from Oregon around some top Eastern schools: Princeton, Penn, Swarthmore, Amherst, and Dartmouth. The information sessions were terrifying. That an applicant needed a 4-point grade average and top-level SAT scores was such a given it was hardly mentioned. Students also had to show they'd taken all the advanced courses their high schools offered, performed community service, done every extracurricular activity under the sun, displayed leadership, and held impressive summer internships.

A few weeks after that trip, my 11-year-old's fifth-grade teacher ran me through the middle-school curriculum my son was to face this fall. Tracing the lines on a paper that looked like a corporate organizational chart, she explained that if he got into advanced math in sixth grade, he'd be on a path to take college math as a senior, boosting his college prospects.

Yikes! We have to start sweating this stuff now? In sixth grade!

I'm sure lots of readers are shaking their heads, wondering, where's this guy been? Yes, I know good colleges are competitive and pricey, but an up-close view makes it all the more appalling.

Total annual charges at private four-year colleges now average more than $30,000 and many top schools charge well over $40,000.

Public four-year schools charge less than $13,000. Are high costs worth it? College graduates do make more money than people with high school diplomas.

Last year, median earnings for male college grads were 63 percent higher than for male high school grads, according to another College Board study.

For women, the figure was 70 percent. Beyond that -- I tell my son -- life is more fun with an education. But, frankly, a lot of the high schoolers I saw on the spring college tour seemed kind of robotic.

Do these students really like all those extra activities? Or are they just getting their tickets punched?

Colleges add these layers of nonacademic admissions criteria because they need some way to winnow the lists of academic stars. And top colleges can charge a fortune simply because students and parents are willing to pay, even if it means every generation goes deeper into hock.

My classmate on the board of trustees didn't worry that students now pay 10 times what we did because there are plenty of people willing to ante up for a trophy degree. But as costs go up, more and more families will have to select colleges on the basis, at least in part, of cost, and there are plenty of cheaper options.

The College Board says 40 percent of full-time undergraduates at four-year institutions are at schools with tuition and fees totaling between $3,000 and $4,000.

Another 23 percent are at ones charging $6,000 to $9,000. Is the low-cost option so bad? Last spring, I told a friend about all I'd seen at the Ivies -- and the enormous cost. "What's wrong with Penn State?" I grumbled. "Hey, I'm a big believer in the land-grant universities," he said -- a successful product of one himself.

Sending a kid to a prestigious school is a real accomplishment. But lots of happy and successful people have come out of state schools.

At less than a third the cost, maybe they're a better buy.

Jeff Brown is a business columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.