Lucky R. Gutierrez, a senior at Stanford who works with low-income high school students as part of campus minority organization, says that "kids are terrified of the high cost, but lack knowledge" of available aid. He says many of them "feel that going to college will be an additional burden on their family, and that's enough to keep them away."

And if students make it to freshman year, they won't necessarily see graduation day. Debbie L. Javeline, a sophomore at Brown, says she has seen friends no longer able to put themselves through college. "I have some anxiety myself," she says. "Will I be able to come back next year?"

Javeline says she waitressed last summer to earn money, but because of her earnings she was placed in a different financial need bracket and thus qualified for less aid. "That decreases your motivation because it seems kind of pointless to work hard," she says.

Tracy A. Matthews, a senior at University of Michigan and member of the campus United Coalition Against Racism, says she knows "a lot of students who have left because they couldn't afford to stay here. I don't know where they go, but it's upsetting--a student shouldn't be forced out of school for that."

Officials say they are worried by the consequences of what they perceive as a trend toward only the richer classes being able to afford a college education.

"If this continues then we'll have a less educated society five or 10 years from now. It's in the national interest to make an investment in education in this country to make us competitive with other nations," says Kirschner.

As minority enrollment has declined, administrators say, many colleges have stepped up minority recruiting and offered their own financial aid packages. But they have not reached as many students as they would like.

"Money is money, and when it's gone, it's gone," says Richard G. Jaeger, Dartmouth's director of admissions. He says his school is not able to give out all of the aid it would like to, and, like many other colleges, has had to resort to financial aid waiting lists, though it continues to a have a need-blind admissions policy.

Representatives of many colleges, especially small private institutions with relatively small financial resources, say they fear their schools will have increasing difficulties meeting the gap between rising tuitions and decreasing federal aid.

In a survey of financial aid administrators at 25 highly competitive colleges, the American Association of University Students noted a "trend that decreasing federal aid was causing an increase in college aid, coming to a point where the colleges were going to max-out," according to Executive Director James J. Plum.

Some officials predict that private colleges may see a substantial drop in minority and low-income enrollment if they are forced to decrease their aid. "We don't have enough money to go around," says Barbara J. Williams, associate director of financial aid at Howard University, a historically black college.

"When there is a short-fall of money at the institutional level, you tend to make offers to those who can manage with less" aid, she says.

At Howard University, Williams says, administrators have shifted enrollment by admitting more students from middle-income and affluent families in recent years. "We're having to eliminate [low-income students] from our population, which runs counter to our mission here," Williams says.

As federal aid has shifted from grants to loans over the past decade, there has been concern over the burden of debt that students are taking on in order to put themselves through college. Many officials say they think that large debts influence a student's choice of major and career as they think ahead to the loans they must pay back after graduation.

National studies show that minorities and women are more fearful to take on debt and have a harder time paying loans back because of disparities in income with their white male counterparts.