College Insurrection has posted many pieces about the cost of higher education and student debt.

In a new article at Forbes, William Baldwin offers students 12 “tricks” to help pay for their college education.

12 Insider Tricks To Pay For College

The fanciest colleges cost $55,000 a year. Suppose you have three youngsters who will be attending a decade from now. If prices climb as they have over the past decade, you’ll spend $990,000. This has to come out of your take-home pay. So go ask your boss for a $1.5 million bonus.

If that isn’t feasible, learn how to work the system. Below, we outline a dozen techniques that families use to make bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees more affordable.

1. Merit

Four years ago Joseph Riley, a Tennessee high school senior, was accepted at Harvard, Princeton and Yale. The son of a doctor, he didn’t qualify for need-based aid. But he was determined to cover his education costs on his own, he says, as his father and grandfather had done. So he turned down the Ivies and took an all-expenses scholarship at the University of Virginia. He’s now a college senior studying Mandarin and politics.

When he got to Charlottesville, Riley joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps, which entitles him to a stipend beyond his full scholarship. Career ambition: join the Army. But that will have to wait for a few years. Next fall he will be attending Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

2. Campus Transfer

Robert Villwock, 27, got a degree in business and economics in 2008. Before taking his first course he demonstrated some good business sense. He found a way to knock $42,000 off the cost of his degree.

He spent the first four semesters living at home while attending Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, where tuition is a lot lower. Then he transferred to the Athens campus of Ohio University, ending with a diploma from the more prestigious institution.

Read the rest at the link below.