Mr Twomey says the average family income is keeping pace with the cost of living.
The Brandeis study says there are five vital factors for this: number of years owning a home, average family income, college education, employment stability, and financial support from families and inheritance.
In most states, the percentage of an average family's income used for a public four-year college -- after financial aid -- has increased, the report said.
Ten years later, it amounted to 25% of that family's average annual income.
Though not conflict-free, the compact helped shape three decades over which the income of the average family doubled.
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In 1978-79, it took 6.9 percent of the median family income to pay the average tuition charge.
The cost for low income families of sending a child to a four year public institution in the United States has risen from 13% of family income in 1980 - this is the one year cost, average cost for low income families of sending a child to a four year public institution has risen from 13% of family income in 1980 to more than 25% today.
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In fact, the average income for the top one percent of Americans has risen almost seven times faster than the income of the average middle class family.
It turns out that from 2001 to 2009, the average middle-class family lost 5 percent of their income.
We had gone -- from 2001 to 2009, there was a period in which the average middle-class family lost 5 percent of their income -- 5 percent of their wages -- during that period.
The below chart plots the growth in total federal and state student aid against the change in one measure of college affordability: the ratio of real average FTE enrollment-weighted tuition to real median family income.
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