Recent efforts to deal with college affordability, including measures now before Congress, raise many questions: Why does college cost so much? How can students ever be expected to pay back their loan debt? Why does the middle class always get squeezed? America's historical commitment to the education of its citizens is perhaps the most important link in the unbroken chain of its national obligation to justice, synonymous with national liberty. But today the burden of paying for higher education has shifted to students and families--and that burden weighs most heavily on poor students and poor families. The poor are subject to a narrowing set of higher-education options, coupled with greater debt and higher rates of academic failure than their more-affluent peers. The fundamental issue at the root of the discussion is the question of who should pay for college. Is college, touted as a ticket to prosperity, a personal investment, with its cost to be borne mostly by the individual? Or is it a public good, dedicated to the general welfare, its cost to be distributed among us all? The author laments what he sees as America's lack of national will to ensure that students who want to go to college are financially able to do so.