Hello, welcome to the price you pay for college episode of Slate Money, the podcast that gives you the business and finance news of the week. I'm

Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with Anna Chimansky of Breaking Views. Hello. I'm here

with Emily Beck of Huffpost. Hello. And we have from the New York Times, Mr. Ron Lieber.

Welcome, Ron.

It's great to be back.

I think the last time you were on the show, we were talking about airline miles or something like that.

But this time you have a whole book out.

What is your book about?

The book is about who pays what and why for college, how the system became so complicated and opaque,

and when, if ever, anybody ought to pay up to $200,000 more for a college education than whatever

it is that their flagship state university is charging.

We are going to dive into that very subject.

Here on Slate Money, we're going to talk about what it means for parental finances.

We're going to talk about student loan relief, which is a big thing on Capitol Hill right now.

We are also going to talk about another one of your investigations, which we have going on right now, into how to get vaccinated against COVID, which is of relevance to everyone.

So all of that coming up on Slate Money.

So Ron, you have obviously been working on this book about paying for college for a while, since long

before the pandemic hit. And now suddenly the pandemic seems to have turned the entire question

about paying for college and whether you should even go to college on its head. Has anything changed permanently, do you think?

I don't think that anything has changed permanently.

I mean, here's how I see it, right?

There's three reasons to go to college.

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