A recent national poll commissioned by Bankrate, which found that 47 percent of American parents cannot afford college tuition, closely reflects the demographic at Vanderbilt.
According to CNN, which reported on the survey, parents are facing a tuition crunch that affects their finances from savings to retirement regardless of tuition levels.
For its part, Vanderbilt is making an effort to ease the pressure, said David Mohnet, director of student financial aid, adding that Vanderbilt's Debt Reduction Initiative allowed the university to give the high amount of grants and gifts last year.
"Vanderbilt, to its credit, has worked very hard to generate grant and gift aid to needy students and has continued to do that while trying to minimize loan assistance," Mohnet said.
Last year's total amount of gift and grant money received by Vanderbilt students totaled approximately $63 million dollars, with 42 percent of students receiving some form of need-based financial aid.
The average package for a Vanderbilt student is $36,000 per year. Of this, 92 percent consists of grants and gifts, 6 percent of loans, and 2 percent of work-study.
The Bankrate poll also addressed the rapidly rising cost of a college education, saying "the tuition at a four-year university (has) increased more than 35 percent in the last five years."
At Vanderbilt, costs have increased to a similar level, 4.5 to 5.5 percent every year, for the past five years.
According to Mohnet "(Vanderbilt's) increases are fairly typical for the group of schools to which it is most similar: high-cost, selective, private universities like Emory, Northwestern and Duke."
But although Vanderbilt aims to "increase tuition at a rate less than or equal to the expected family contribution," Mohnet said the rate of growth of Vanderbilt's tuition, which is critically judged by the university, has risen more quickly than family's incomes.
"Vanderbilt looks at tuition costs very carefully and spends a lot of time determining tuition rate increase each year," he said. "We try to keep (tuition) as low as possible while generating the revenue to run a high level of education and maintain faculty income."
And Mohnet emphasized that although tuition has risen at Vanderbilt, so have both expected family contributions and total financial aid awarded.
Vanderbilt is need-blind when it comes to financial aid - that is, admissions decisions are made with no regard to financial aid.
After admission, "Vanderbilt is committed to and meets 100 percent of student's financial need, which puts us in a very selective group of schools," Mohnet said. "It frankly takes a lot of money to do that."