It can be 6x or 10x the median income, at the end of the day they would still be paying 140k a year in college costs in a year. ALMOST NO ONE CAN AFFORD THAT. Plus most families that make the median income and go to a private college get substantial financial aid. What is it that Harvard says, for families making under X, Harvard is cheaper than state?
D has friends who had a projected family contribution of $5000 per kid. At a full need school that gives very little merit money to a kid that had previously been wait listed. The kid ended up not taking it because he got someplace he wanted to go more where he also got a generous package.
While that may be in the top whatever percent nationally, in New York, California and a few other places those families are sometimes borrowing money to make ends meet. In Iowa, if you make $280K a year and have for a number of years, you have a nice chunk put away if you are responsible. Sometimes I watch house hunters and just salivate over what you can get for $300-350 in some other part of the country. In my area that would be a two bedroom on a main street with stores and unsavory foot traffic in a school district with metal detectors and a high drop out rate or a perhaps a three hour a day commute or more. As it is most people have a two hour a day commute anyway.
As for it being a choice to live near a big city (as I have seen stated on these forums), if your family is from the area, especially if you are responsible for elderly relatives, if you have a family business, if you are of an ethnicity that is not well accepted in certain parts of the country or are more comfortable where you have a community based on your homeland, first language or place of worship, or do not want your child growing up as the only one of his or her race, religion or ethnicity in his or her classroom, if you are licensed or have a practice or built a business in a particular area, it is not a choice. If you are your average caucasian middle class christian living near relatives in an inexpensive area of the country, this simply may not be something you are familiar with and think it would be easy for everyone to live more inexpensively and move away from big cities. Perhaps colleges s should think about this more as well.
Colleges not taking that into account, that is a fact, but it does not make it fair. Also when you negotiate with a college, if you can, that is something taken into account then.