WORKING YOUR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE. University Diaries notes the latest New York Times discovery of what may be a non-trend trend (defined as "All my neighbors in the Hamptons are doing this." Yes, and all your neighbors in the Hamptons voted for John Anderson in 1980.)

More middle- and upper-middle-class parents are drawing similar lines, limiting what they will pay for higher education. While financing has long been a strain, parents seem willing today to pass more of the burden on to their children, financial aid officers say. Many are worried about affording retirement and say their fixed costs eat up their income. Others have not saved enough or are helping pay for care for their aging parents.

"What I've really seen in the last 10 years is a generational shifting of the responsibility" to pay for college, said Ellen Frishberg, director of student financial services at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Our parents helped us pay for school. These parents are not as willing to help their children pay for school."

There are no data directly measuring shifts in who bears the cost of college. But financial aid officers at institutions from Johns Hopkins to the University of California, Los Angeles, to Carleton College say they have observed a shift in recent years.

Tuition and fees at many colleges have long exceeded the amount of money that students themselves are permitted to borrow for college costs under the federal loan programs. Parents, however, can borrow up to the cost of attendance under federal programs, known as PLUS loans.

But although the aggregate volume of federal loans to parents has risen over time, it is far outstripped by the total of private loans for education from banks, the number of which has increased steeply. Private lending is the fastest-growing piece of higher education finance and, responding to demand, more banks are expanding their offerings.

We shall see how that sorts out. On the one hand, this site has frequently noted the near invisibility of the premium to attending a name college. On the other hand, this site recognizes that Access U?ber Alles might well be driving the positional arms race, as parents dig down to buy their offspring freedom from the watered-down degrees that might result.

Working through college, though? Ringing up pies at Carson Gulley Commons.