The Latest in College Pricing: Tuition at 10 Percent of Your Income

College tuition will cost no more than 10 percent of parental adjusted gross income.That’s it.

Grab the figure from Line 11a of your 1040 form, and divide by 10.Starting today, those are the instructions for anyone interested in applying to Whitman College, a small liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Wash.The school is one of a small but growing number of institutions that are finally answering the extremely reasonable question that families have asked in vain for decades: Why can’t you just tell us the price we’ll pay without having to apply and get in first?“We’re not hiding the cost of college behind secret formulas,” the school now proclaims on its website.Last month, Brandeis University made a similar move by introducing a tool allowing prospective students and their families to upload tax forms and high school transcripts in exchange for a “you will pay” figure.What’s in it for you is clear.What’s in it for the schools may surprise you.Whitman has seen a notable falloff in applications from the upper middle class.

Many of those families have high enough incomes to disqualify themselves from much need-based financial aid, but they don’t have enough money to afford the school’s annual list price of close to $90,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....