College tuition on the rise - can we afford it?

With nothing but well wishes, we congratulated and celebrated Odessa’s 12 graduating seniors last week, all but one with confirmed college plans in place. There were many scholarships announced for excellence in academics, athletics and community service. However, the full tuition and other college or university-associated costs far exceed the amounts of those hard-earned and well-deserved scholarships.

Katie Schmidt, a reporter from The Olympian, tells us of another recent graduate, Gabriel Dum- brique from Lincoln High School in Tacoma. Gabriel took Advanced Placement classes, calculus, main...