We've had a train wreck in higher education with the cost of tuition going up way beyond the rate of inflation. The increases have been extraordinary because colleges are usually semi-closed institutions that are not affected by capitalism. But now even wealthy families can't always afford college for their children. So Harvard and other elite schools have developed new sliding scales for tuition based on family income. Harvard's income cutoff is $180K/year, which would cover 95 percent of all families in the United States. Families won't be expected to pay more than 10 percent of their income regardless of overall tuition costs. The bulk of the costs will be paid by the school's huge endowment funds.

The top 5 percent of Americans will still have to pay big bucks to go to school, but the idea is that top schools shouldn't be just for the filthy rich. Princeton, Penn, Swarthmore, Dartmouth and Duke are also doing these sliding scale plans. It used to be that you couldn't go to an elite school without scholarships. The only alternative was to borrow oneself into oblivion. We've had calls from people with more than $100K in student loan debt, which is an incredible handcuff as your start your professional life. Also, many of the traditional scholarships were red light/green light based on your income. This new model is more like having a rheostat in your home that gently adjusts between the two extremes.