AOL Money & Finance writer and editor Zac Bissonnette is a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an expert on getting a great education without going broke.

US News & World Report's annual America's Best Colleges publication is extremely influential in the college decision process for many families -- and not entirely wrongly. It furnishes readers with rankings, information on up and coming colleges, and a detailed guide to loans and financial aid.

The directory provides information about financial aid for every major college in America. Villanova University, for example, determined that 45% of its undergrads "had financial need" with an average aid package of $23,433 per year.

But what exactly is financial aid? On page 130 of the 2009 edition, America's Best Colleges defines it as "grants, loans, and jobs."

Now hold on there just a minute. On what planet is pay for a job financial aid? I thought that fell under the broader heading of "work" -- an exchange of a service for money, no? Is selling kidneys financial aid too? I also can't figure out how a loan -- money to be paid back with interest -- qualifies as financial aid. Does that include private loans? It doesn't say.

US News & World Report lumps grants, loans, and work study together, making the figures essentially useless for students looking to see how much they will actually have to pay, whether that's tomorrow or over the next 20 years. But what's most troubling is that the metric is a reflection of the way too many families think about college: no regard for the the impact money to be paid back later will have on their children's lives.

To read more from Zac's 'College on a Dime' series, click here. Be sure to leave a comment if you have a question or topic you'd like him to cover in a future post.

The NY Times has been taking a closer look at the student loan industry for quite some time now. But a recent article on student loan counseling and advice is perhaps the most useful to date.

The meat of the article centers on the need for students to receive counseling on the loans they are taking out, something that is already required for federally-backed loans. The story also provides some great social engineering tips for getting the best information about student loans from a college's financial aid department.

Even though federal loans require an entrance and exit interview, it is essentially a bare bones counseling session often done online. From my experience, the only takeaway from the counseling is that at some point in the future you have to pay this money back. I often joked about my wish to have been the first individual to pull that scam, "What? I have to pay back a loan? I had no idea!" The NY Times article pushes for a more honest and open counseling session. One which makes the students realize what taking on copious amounts of debt can do later in life, essentially a Scared Straight for college finances.

An in-your-face introduction to student loans and the challenges attached to them is a great idea but I think a college is the wrong party to be doing it. While I believe that the majority of higher education institutions do have students' best interests in mind, requiring them to warn their charges about the financing they are using to attend the school is likely to have conflict of interest issues. This would be akin to requiring a car dealership's financier to explain all the risks and issues with getting a loan to buy a $40,000 vehicle. I'm not saying consumers as a whole don't need some counseling on finances but we shouldn't leave that piece of education up to the organizations that have a vested interest in getting a customer to take out a loan.

When Ashley Overhouse's parents found out that the cost of her first year at the University of California-Santa Cruz would be almost 8% higher than they'd thought, she says they had an understandable reaction: "They freaked."

Ashley's parents aren't alone. As tuitions and fees continue to rise both in California and nationwide, there is increasing pressure on college-bound members of the class of 2008 and their families to fill the gap between what they can get in federal and state financial aid and what a higher education will actually cost them.

To finance her freshman year of college this fall, Ashley has secured a $5,000 Cal Grant, two scholarships and two loans from UCSC. Even with all this in place, she's still looking at ways to cover costs. "My scholarships are for $400 and $1,000," Ashley says. "That'll pay for my books."

When I was applying for college/going through the financial aid process, i ran into a major injustice: the FAFSA formula essentially penalized me for saving dutifully as I spent my summers working, deducting my personal savings from the amount of financial aid I could receive.

I was livid: I had worked hard and scrimped on entertainment/clothing/car expenses, and it was all for nil. I would have been better off not working and spending my summers playing Playstation, and that's wrong.

So I was delighted when I saw an article in today's Springfield Republican about a program offered by the Springfield Partners for Community Action. Lower-income students who work there, save $1 thousand, and complete an eight hour course on money management are eligible to receive an additional $2 thousand in grant money for college.

This is a brilliant program, and it's amazing that nothing like this is done on a large scale. Rather than penalizing ambitious students who save, we should be rewarding them like Springfield Partners does.

One idea: every high school student should be able to save $4 thousand toward college. Those who fail to do that should receive reduced financial aid, as they have not made the commitment they are requesting of others. Students who work hard and save should not have to subsidize couch potatoes.

Looking through the news recently, I read that two Ohio students were each sentenced to 20 years in jail for armed robbery. When the Judge asked them why they had committed the crimes, they stated that they needed the cash to pay for school. Apparently, their tuition went up and their scholarships and financial aid were not enough to cover the costs of their education.

It's been a few years since I was in school, but I still have clear memories of the loan shark-style tactics that the university used to get money out of me. I remember being charged for athletic tickets that I never received, health-care that I never used, and buses that I never rode. And then there were the meal plans that I was forced to buy, the overpriced textbooks that I couldn't afford, and the ridiculous parking tickets that I got whenever the student parking lot filled up (which usually happened sometime around 7:30 in the morning). When I didn't pay, the school blocked my account, denying me access to classes, library books, and even food.