CATER TO THAT EXCESS DEMAND. A Forbes financial advice column questions the wisdom of buying your children an expensive degree.

Start while your child is still in high school, and look for local community college classes he or she may be able to take before graduation. Consider your in-state public college; tuition will be much lower, and your college student can continue to live at home instead of paying for room, board and other expenses somewhere else.

Yes, provided the nearby community college or branch of the state university hasn't sold out to the access-assessment-remediation-retention model or committed academic fraud in the name of first-generation, commuter, non-traditional students.

Together with your child's school counselor, look for grants, jobs, work-study programs and other ways to pay for college--this is a great opportunity to teach him or her about money, and how to graduate with the least amount of debt.

This strategy generates lobbyists: at one time a student could make expenses at a residential state university with a full-time summer job and a part-time campus job. Legislatures have changed their appropriations in a way that has raised tuitions and fees. Expense-preference behavior by administrators raising money for beer 'n circus hasn't helped.