at the green hilts school in dallas texas and from new york, my colleague pa tricia, a correspondent for al jazeera america's real money with ali velshi. pa tricia, does college and university costs end up operating in the economy differently from other things that we buy? you know, some of the colleges that have inceased their prices the most, have seen the largest rise in applications. so apparently, price isn't scaring people off. >> price isn't scaring people off, but the fact of the matser that we are seeing a knock on two our economy of this massive student loan debt burden. and one thing that economists are now starting to take a look at is what would be a reasonable percentage of median annual household income for four year public university tuition? so for example, in over half the country right now, tuitions are 15% of median annual household income. and that's before taxes. that is a really big bite. and the middle class is really really suffering in the face of rising tuitions. and in fact, studying show that kids from lower middle income families that's earning between 4