“Anna” is a junior at NYU. She was part of a small group of students selected for financial aid review. And she recently found out that, despite no rise in her family’s income or assets, she is having her Pell Grants and some associated scholarships revoked retroactively for this semester and for next year. The email that let her know came at 4:30 p.m., while she was studying for a midterm in her practical, applied social science major. Studious and bright, she hopes to get a doctoral degree. She’s made NYU work financially for the past three years by cobbling together federal loans and the meager grants she can get from the university. But in a single email, the cost of her degree rises by $40,000.

NYU is a school filled with students who are mortgaging their futures on their degrees. The average student debt load here upon graduation is over $30,000. The university’s financial aid is slim-to-none, the endowment can’t fund financial aid to necessary levels. And the university has what at least anecdotally seems to be a regular practice of revoking grants for seniors. They do this so students have gotten far enough through their college career that many just take out predatory private loans in order to stay. NYU gets paid; the lenders get paid. Students get the bum end of the deal.

This has been written about and written about — the way one of the great engines of social mobility in this country, our higher-education system, now ends up reinforcing class difference. Too many students, unable to pay tuition even at less-expensive public universities, are taking on debt loads that are unsustainable and unrealistic.

“Anna” has several choices now. Her family can scramble to come up with the funds — difficult, if not impossible. She would appeal her financial aid decision, but the email informing her of that decision was marked, “Final Decision — No Appeals.” She can go back to her home-state school but would have to do an extra year, given that credits are often difficult to transfer across schools. She could transfer to the City University New York, but her tuition there would end up being more given that she’s out of state and still receives some grants from NYU. The student tuition crisis isn’t just about poor students taking out too much debt to go to schools they can’t afford. It’s about the middle-class, pressured into the highest-ranked and most-expensive schools; and financial aid departments whose incentives force them to act for the university rather than the student.

We’re putting our best and brightest in a bind. It’s wrongheaded — both for the students who are pressured into attending the best colleges regardless of cost, and for a country struggling with an undereducated population that must compete with other countries.

The United States is one of the only industrialized democracies where college education is considered to be a luxury that students pay for themselves. In Germany, higher education is free. Attempts to introduce even modest fees led to student protests and were dropped. In the U.K., tuition fees are capped at a maximum of $14,000 per year — not cheap, but a bargain compared to all but the least-expensive options in the US.

It is important, however, to understand that this free education comes with a trade-off. American students have gotten used to smaller classes, to funded student activities, to professorial access. These are expensive commodities. But it does seem like there should at least be a less-expensive option.

‘Anna’ is going to stay at NYU. She’s taking out a private loan. She hopes she’ll be able to pay it back. But she doesn’t have much of a choice. The least NYU could do is guarantee aid for four years, and stop the bait-and-switch. Knowing NYU, though, the chances of that happening are about the same as the Emir of Abu Dhabi extending free tuition across the Atlantic.

Ben Miller is a foreign correspondent. Email him at [email protected].