The president will spend the next two days on a bus tour of New York and Pennsylvania that includes stops at three colleges and a high school. At each stop, he'll be talking about ways to keep higher education costs down.

The majority of students at every income level except those whose families make more than $100,000 received some type of federal aid, says the National Center for Education Statistics.

As college tuition rates rise across the nation, one school in Colorado is managing to keep tuition low.That school is Colorado Mountain College. The U.S.鈥�

Rates on federally subsidized Stafford loans, which help low and middle-income college students, doubled on July 1. There is now pressure for a deal to undo the increase. NPR's David Greene talks to Matthew Chingos, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy.

The small, highly selective college for artists, engineers and architects had been one of the last remaining tuition-free schools in the country. But in April, Cooper's board decided to begin charging tuition for most undergraduates. A rotating cast of students has now taken up residence in the president's office until the board agrees to reconsider.

Jeffrey Selingo, an editor with The Chronicle of Higher Education, argues that American colleges have lost their way. In College (Un)bound, he describes the challenges facing American higher education and takes a close look at what college students are getting in return for their tuition.

May 1 is when high school seniors have to send in their deposits to colleges to signal their decision to go there. Morning Edition visits Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C. to hear from Eli Clarke at the College Counseling Office, and two high school seniors, about their choices.

The college said it was breaking with more than a century of tradition to protect its long-term viability. Cooper Union will begin to charge its undergraduate students half of the going rate in the fall of 2014.

Americans hold about $1 trillion in student loans, and the debt burden is only getting heavier. One financial aid counselor says students are starting to smarten up and asking questions he'd never considered himself before the recession hit.

Dale Stephens says many students would be better off ditching college and finding alternate ways to complete their educations. His new book, Hacking Your Education, explores that idea. "When you think about education as an investment, you have to think about what the return is going to be," he says.