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Hi, and welcome to the Longview. I'm Christine Ben's director of personal finance for Morningstar.

And I'm Jeff Battack, Chief Ratings Officer for Morningstar Research Services.

Our guest on the podcast today is New York Times financial columnist and author Ron Lieber.

His latest book is called The Price You Pay for College, an entirely new roadmap for the biggest financial decision your family will ever make.

He is also the author of The Opposite of Spoiled, Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous and Smart About Money,

and Co-author of Taking Time Off, Inspiring Stories of Students who Enjoyed Successful Breaks from College

and How You Can Plan Your Own.

Ron has been the Your Money columnist for the New York

Times since 2008. Before coming to the Times, he wrote the Green Thumb personal finance column

for the Wall Street Journal and was part of the startup team at the paper's personal journal section.

He attended Amherst College. Ron, welcome to the Longview. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you so much for

being here. I think we have so many topics that we could cover with you, but today we're going to talk

about college and paying for college, which is the subject of your new book. So before we get into

the specifics of paying for college, let's spend a bit of time on the college landscape more

broadly. How has the pandemic turned colleges and the college experience upside down?

Well, I think the way that it has focused the mind for the people who are writing the checks is

...