As professionals, anytime we gather to discuss first-year student success and retention, there is an elephant in the room: the cost of college. Listeners may be surprised to find out how little we include this elephant in our conversations. There is almost a passive acceptance that costs are high, and there's little we can do about it. Of course, parents and students can't so easily avoid discussing cost.

Here we explore the cost of college and why so many students and families are caught off guard by the high cost of the first-year.

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