During the past couple of days, I've been trawling through real, live people's blogs and found a surprising depth and breadth of monologue there on the topic. I'd like to bring some of them to your attention.

First, a question: Did you ever imagine that you'd see, in middle-class America, an economic circumstance so twisted that college students, attending public universities, would sign up to receive food stamps, and line up to collect handouts of milk and bread?

Neither did I. But it's happening right now in Seattle, Washington, and in Denver, Colorado, and in Florence, South Carolina, according to the Associated Press.

For years, the small University District pantry has offered help to the working poor and single parents in this neighborhood of campus rentals. Now rising food prices are bringing another group: Struggling college students. "Right now, with things the way they are, a lot of students just can't afford to eat," said Terry Capleton, who started a Facebook group called "I Ain't Afraid to be on Food Stamps" when he was a student at Benedict College in South Carolina.
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In the past year, the price of groceries has jumped nearly 5 percent, the highest increase in nearly two decades. The cost of some staples has shot up by more than 30 percent. At the University District pantry in Seattle, demand has risen roughly 25 percent this year. About 150 students visit each week during the school year.

The Community College of Denver runs its own food-assistance program, which has seen demand double in the past year. "It's the highest I've ever seen," said Jerry Mason, the school's director of student life. "Our assumption is it's because of the high price of food."

There is something terribly, terribly wrong in America when college students -- and active-duty military families, and others, of course -- find their so-called "middle-class" resources so stretched that they qualify for aid usually reserved for the truly poor. But that's the Associated Press's finding.

Deirdre Wilson, a junior at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C., applied for food stamps in November because her paycheck from a work-study job didn't stretch far enough to cover her expanding grocery bill. "Before, when I lived in the dorms, I was on the meal plan," the 20-year-old said. "Now that I'm in the apartment, I have to pay for food, and I have to pay my cell phone bill. I don't make enough to pay for both."

Standing outside a campus market, University of Washington junior Doug McManaway wonders how he will afford to pay for groceries through the summer term. "I'm already really poor and on a really tight budget," he said. "I have to pay rent, and after that there isn't much left over."

And this is WHILE they're attending college. As I've illustrated in 12 diaries during the past couple of weeks, life doesn't get much easier once they've collected their degrees and left campus.

A blogger named Anthony Arndt saw this report early yesterday morning -- he lives in Berlin, Germany, now -- and was inspired to write about his own experience as a college student during the past several years. "Can't say I'm surprised," he wrote.

By the time I left the U of MN (both as a student and as an employee) there had been three years of wage-freezes plus 11-27% tuition increases. I added up the expenses based on what my friends, co-workers, and classmates were actually paying, and for a single-person (most college students are) it would cost about $20k to attend the U of MN paying in-state tuition, books, food, and rent.

Most students worked either retail or food-service nearby or they worked for the U of MN. Working 40 hrs/week as a student employee you will make about $14-16k per year, before taxes. So, working one full-time job, you'd be at least $4k in debt every year. And that's if you're studying liberal arts where you can buy used text books and get away with cheap lab fees.

I can't honestly say that I wasn't well-off as a kid. Both of my parents were teachers and we always got by. We always had a house, we always had food. I know that puts me in pretty good standing world-wide.

My parents helped when they could, my sister was two years younger than me and my brother was four years younger. My mom had saved up enough to put about $6k/year towards my college for the first four years. There's no way I could have made it as far as I did without my mom's help. I was able to go full-time for the first two years (living at home going to community college) then up to half-time for the next ten. My brother started college when I was 22 so my parents just couldn't afford to keep helping significantly. They helped where they could but it was his turn and he needed the help more.

Like a lot of middle-class kids, Anthony was caught in a squeeze: His parents didn't earn enough to pay for his college education -- even the remainder of the cost after he kicked in his wages -- but they earned too much to qualify for various loans. To make matters worse, he writes, "in the '90's the Federal forms counted my mom's and step-dad's incomes, plus my dad's, plus mine but didn't count the fact that between the three of them, they had 6 kids and a grandchild."

So he turned elsewhere for aid.

I could get Credit Union loans to help with car payments, they could repossess a car. Loans for tuition, I actually had loan officers laugh. Being $4-10k short every year for school, there weren't a lot of options. So I worked 40-60 (and sometimes 80-100) hour weeks just about every week from 1996 until I left Minnesota in 2005.

I remember many paychecks where I'd deposit the money, pay the University (my sole-employer), and have about $14 to make it to the next paycheck in two weeks. Food, bus-fare, everything. I biked when I first moved up there but then it got stolen. I walked a lot after that, it was only 5-6 miles to campus. And that was back when I was living in a part of Minneapolis that in 1996 was being referred to as "Murder-opolis". Lots of ramen and spaghetti. I'd only use half the flavor packet from the ramen then save it for the noodles. I usually couldn't afford sauce.

By 2005, I had been going to school part-time for almost nine years, it was all I could afford, and the University was going to start charging students for full-time enrollment regardless of how many of the classes that they needed were actually offered that term. As a senior, there were semesters where there was only one class to take (about 3-5 credits) but I would have to enroll for 13-16 or be expelled. So, one semester short of my BA, I left because I realized that I could now get the loans but that my cumulative debt from ten years of college would double in just that last one. If the classes I needed were offered and if they weren't canceled.

Anthony concludes his commentary with both the diagnosis and the solution to the problem: "Right now, it's hard to get in, harder to pay, impossible to get loans (granted, if you qualify for loans, you're probably too poor to be living in America legally...), and it just gets more difficult and more expensive the longer you are in. Really, if you want to go to college, decide what you want to study, and find a private college that specializes in it. Preferably in Europe. A BA from the Univeristy of Oslo (Norway) costs about the same as an AA from an American community college... for an American. It's cheaper if you're a local."

An item published in Kentucky on Sunday hits the same notes I've struck for the past two weeks: Rising tuition and other costs borne by students and parents, but less investment from the federal government in grants for higher education.

Without financial aid, Jonathan Curry describes his chance of attending the University of Kentucky in a single word. ”Impossible,“ said the senior from Henderson. "I wouldn't be here at all." With the help of federal, state and UK scholarships, Curry is on schedule to graduate next spring. Still, college has hardly been free from struggle. He works 15 to 20 hours a week taking tickets at Comedy Off Broadway, and donates blood plasma as often as twice a week. "Sometimes I need groceries, and I have $5," he said.

His mother, Cynthia Curry, works two jobs and they still don't have enough to cover college bills. So on top of the $10,000 he has already borrowed, he expects to take out $16,000 more in loans this year. "It's more and more debt," he said. "There's something wrong somewhere."

Meanwhile, the buying power of the Pell grant itself has dropped "by half from 1991 to 2001" and a report from the Education Commission of States declares, "Since 1980, loans have overtaken grants as the primary form of financial aid for postsecondary students." Kentucky's Higher Education Assistance Authority has charted a 150 percent increase in the amount of student loans it guarantees between 2000 and 2007.

Samantha Moore, a Transylvania junior from Cadiz, says she can cover about half of the $30,000 it costs her each year to attend Transylvania University with a combination of three federal grants, two state grants, two loans and a work-study job. Moore wants to be fluent in Spanish, and she recently left for five months of study in Peru. She feels privileged to study abroad and attend a college where ”some of my classmates are paying full ticket,“ says Moore, who describes herself as ”high need.“

Still, Moore thinks ”our country is not investing enough in education at all levels“ and should provide more money to college and universities to hold down the cost of tuition.

Like Moore and Curry, Candice Jackson faces debt from college loans. Jackson borrowed $30,000 to earn a master's degree. Now she is a clinical social worker who provides day treatment for people with persistent and severe mental illness. The loan allowed her to finish her degree in two years, instead of the four years it would have taken if she had worked but not borrowed money. She used a small part of the $30,000 to live on, but most of it went to tuition and books. It will take her 10 years to pay back the loans.