The tuition discounts help disadvantaged students attend otherwise cost-prohibitive schools and stabilize enrollment numbers at a time when many schools are struggling to fill their classrooms. But experts say the cuts can eat away at those schools’ bottom lines and force them into a vicious circle of financial triage. That these students are getting so much financial aid, says Michelle Asha Cooper, the president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, “is good news—but the not-so-good news is that the rising discounts are very tricky and not sustainable.” The average cost of educating each student at public four-year colleges grew by 14 percent from 2011 to 2016, according to an analysis of federal data by the higher-education consulting firm rpk Group.

While the rising demand for fancy amenities could explain some of the increasing costs, personnel spending is, as The Atlantic contributor Amanda Ripley has reported, the biggest expenditure for many schools. That could be fueling the University of Chicago’s march toward a six-figure sticker price. Its president is one of the highest-paid university executives in the country, earning more than $2 million during the 2017–18 fiscal year. Plus, it boasts an “extraordinary” number of Nobel-laureate alumni and scholars. Esteemed professors are one asset that helps schools appeal to prospective students and climb in the rankings, as do smaller class sizes, extracurricular opportunities, and new buildings. Money spent on these things helps schools secure prestige, but it also raises costs.

Read: Why college became so expensive

What often ends up happening is that wealthy students whose families can afford the sticker price help subsidize costs for their less privileged peers. The problem is that, with colleges now more dependent than ever on tuition for revenue, schools such as the University of Chicago enroll a relatively limited number of students from the lowest income brackets. Federal data show that Pell Grant recipients accounted for just 11 percent of Chicago’s students during the 2017–18 academic year, and as of fall 2018, just 5 percent of them were African American. The university also doesn’t enroll any part-time students. All in all, more than three dozen colleges and universities in the U.S. enroll more students from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the bottom 60 percent, according to a study by a team of researchers, including the economist Raj Chetty.

Those divides underscore why sticker prices matter—even for the students whose attendance would be subsidized. Just seeing six figures attached to a school’s name could deter lower-income students from applying. Plus, all the information is extremely confusing—in a survey of students and parents, roughly three out of four respondents said they struggled to make sense of all the numbers included in financial-aid offer letters and online.

Nationally, surging sticker prices have “already gotten out of control,” Cooper says, pointing to numerous colleges that have had to shut down in recent years because of financial difficulties. And as long as colleges remain in an arms race to retain or gain prestige, many more schools are bound to tack another digit onto their sticker prices.

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