Market Watch Karin Price Mueller July 5, 2017 Excerpts: "Using Rutgers University as a state school example, the total cost of a four-year undergrad degree including room and board will be $463,812 when your grandchild attends college, DeFelice said." "DeFelice said it’s entirely possible that the assumptions he used are way off base. He said 5% is the historical educational expense inflation rate over the past 15 years, and we don’t know if college costs will continue rise at that torrid pace. “My personal feeling is that something needs to be done about the skyrocketing cost of education in this country, but that is an argument for another day,” he said." New baby? This is how much college will cost in 18 years - MarketWatch
I was okay with that. As with the future value of a stock fund, you could start with appropriate numbers before getting to, "Of course that's not possible because..."
Agreed, I was really just going for funny. I realize you basically can't reasonably talk about something that speculative except under the sort of conditions you describe.
1) places like UPeople 2) kids going to Germany for "free" college 3) free community college You could take factors such as these and extrapolate to exact opposite as that of the article.