Costs at private nonprofit four-year colleges have increased by more than 150 percent since 1982, but the real trouble is at four-year public schools, where inflation-adjusted costs have experienced a startling 250 percent jump.
It’s not so difficult to understand how this puts families in a bind. As of 2011, only half of American households could claim an income of more than $50,000, according to the U.S. Census -- a number low enough to make paying for a child’s college education appear more dream than reality.
And by many measures, college is more important than ever. As the CAP report states, “almost two-thirds of jobs in our economy will [soon] require some type of education or training beyond high school.” Already today, the unemployment rate among college students is around half that of the national rate. College graduates also earn roughly three times that of high school dropouts.
This all adds up to a $1 trillion national debt crisis. And to make matters even worse, rates on some loans are set to double on July 1.

college costs

However, that case is totally different in China where parents are willing to fork out as much as USD 1,300 in order to get their hands on the exams answers and extremist will go to the extend of  bribing, beating and threatening teachers or invigilators so their children will get to be admitted to local universities. 
Recently hundred of parents and their children manifested  their anger outside a school in Hubei claiming invigilators for the dreaded gaokao as being overly strict and are giving hard times for them. Gaokao is a high stake exams which will determine future of young Chinese students and the parents see it as a gateway to success if they do well and enter top universities.
An excerpt; 

Police had to line up in two rows in front of Zhongxiang City's No. 3 Secondary School on Saturday to protect and escort the teachers from the parent-student mob."If you don't come out, we'd beat you to death," a female voice is heard shouting in a video of the incident posted online.Some parents, however, said they acted because the security checks carried out on their children to prevent any from cheating were inappropriate."The children are already nervous. Then there are male teachers doing body searches. It's going to make them even more nervous psychologically," said an angry mother in a video shown on the Shenzhen Satellite TV channel.
Besides alleging their kids were groped during these body searches, and bribing in order to get what they want, some in another province in China hid mini walkie-talkies in order to receive answers from outsiders. 


"When it comes to cheating during the gaokao, the cheats are always one step ahead of the invigilators," education scholar Cheng Fangping of Renmin University told The Straits Times.The angry mob outside the school in Hubei also reflects a distortion of values, analysts add."The key issue is that those who cheat don't see anything wrong with it. They think it's very normal," noted education scholar Xiong Bingqi of the non-governmental 21st Century Education Research Institute.
Among other things done besides attacking invigilators, there had also been casses of drips and jabs usage to boost  energy levels and female students taking birth control pills or hormone injections to delay menstruation to be in the best physical state for the exam.

Now, if you think it is over-hyped when the southern city of Guangzhou introduced dedicated lanes for vehicles taking students to the gaokao exam centres, what about an incident in 2007 when
 parents of central Anhui province took no chances and demanded that a plane slated to take off near a test centre be diverted so that it would not affect their children while they sat an English listening comprehension paper?....


Has the world be filled with crazies, or it is just the Chinese?...