I got rather decent grades in high school, AP'd 4 subjects for credit, etc. and decided to move out of state to here, Colorado, for my schooling, at an insane expense that will end up being around $100,000 after expenses.
In order to get it *DOWN* to $100,000, I had to financially emancipate myself from my parents in order to become a resident of the State of Colorado to get in-state tuition, meaning that, at least through my college career, I can receive zero money whatsoever from immediate family support. This meant all loans.
So, naturally, CU still looked at my Expected Family Contribution, meaning the income of my parents, and deducted money from my grants and federal loan support as such to accommodate that. I'm not allowed to get money from my family, but "hurr, we're going to expect your family to pay you money, which you can't do".
I've got a bright future in terms of career (barring death or major disability and the like), so maybe they just figured that and found a way to stab me in the back and bleed me for more money, maybe the American collegiate beurocracy is a massive sack of ****, but somehow, someway, they figured it more important to get my money than to consider the financial situation it puts a student like me in. Oh, and they're dropping $300 million on a new football stadium for a crap team that rarely has more than 5 wins a season, and the stadium is VERY nice looking as is.
Now, to link this to the thread I'm ranting in, my school has something like 60+% students from in-state, and I got a small-ish cut of the financial aid pie, all considered. This means that either I'm a minority among a massively-wealthy in-state crowd, or the University way, way overspends and increases tuition by ~2% a year to cover dumb costs.
/rant