Are you having a pleasant day? Got enough sleep? Coffee’s especially soothing? The kids got off to school with minimal mayhem? Well, here’s one way to ruin it: Visit one of those online cost-of-college calculators and figure out how much it’s going to set you back when the kids are ready to enroll.

For your fifth-grader, let’s say you have your eye on an in-state, four-year public university that currently charges about $6,000 a year, such as the University of Washington. You’ll need about $46,000 and that covers only tuition. Let’s say your child’s interests would take her to an out-of-state public university that currently charges $20,000 a year. Now, you’re looking at … gulp! … more than $150,000. Add tens of thousands of dollars more for private schools.

Finished? OK, how about the next kid?

These calculations are based on a 30-year trend of tuition easily outpacing inflation and income gains. Today, families and students are paying an exorbitant price and running up crippling debt. Annually, about 400,000 qualified students are putting college on hold or skipping it altogether.

Playing background music to this exclusionary math are political leaders who extol the societal benefits of a college education. They correctly point out that college is the key for states – and the nation as a whole – to stay competitive in our rapidly changing global economy. They note that more than ever an individual’s success is tied to a diploma.

But when it comes to adequately financing higher education, including student grants and loans, they simply haven’t mustered the will. In 20 years, the value of federal Pell Grants has dropped from covering 60 percent of the average tuition to about 33 percent. In the 1989-90 school year, about 30 percent of undergraduate students borrowed. In 2003-04, that figure had jumped to 51 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. What’s more, more than 75 percent of undergraduates began the 2004 year with credit cards, carrying an average balance of $2,169. Today, their college debt averages about $20,000.

One of the sad symptoms of the inaction of politicians is that students and families are increasingly turning to private loans, which carry higher interest rates and unfavorable payback terms. Ten years ago, such loans made up 7 percent of the total. Now it is 24 percent. And lenders are marketing these loans more aggressively to make for losses related to subprime mortgages.

The lure of a college degree is a rewarding job with comfortable pay. But because of whopping debt, many graduates today – and into the future – will continue to live like students long after they’ve gotten their sheepskins.