BLACKSBURG -- By any measure, going to college is becoming more costly.

Tuition and fees for four-year Virginia public colleges rose 8.3 percent last fall.

Projections from two local schools, Virginia Tech and Radford University, predict tuition and fees to increase this fall another 7 percent to 8 percent -- at the very least.

And long-anticipated legislation signed Wednesday by President Bush will raise interest rates on student loans starting July 1.

So while students are being forced to borrow more, the cost of borrowing will become more expensive.

Such was the backdrop for "Super Saturday," a Feb. 4 event of financial aid workshops across the state.

Barry Simmons, Virginia Tech's director of scholarships and financial aid, ran one workshop at Tech. While giving advice on how parents and students could best negotiate the financial-aid maze, Simmons held to a basic theme.

The money is still out there, and college is still affordable.

With financial aid deadlines looming -- Tech's deadline is March 7, Radford's is March 1 -- that was welcome news to students and parents.

"It's hard to get information," Susan Neu said. "It's just not readily available."

She and her husband, Wayne, were at Tech's student services building at 10 a.m. on Super Saturday with their daughter, Adriane Colby, a senior at Blacksburg High School who plans on attending Virginia Tech in the fall.

Although both parents teach at Tech, they're novices in the world of financial aid.

They have no other children, so their last experience with paying for higher education was more than a decade ago.

In 1999, the Virginia General Assembly approved a 20 percent cut in tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates.

That was followed by an in-state tuition freeze, which was passed as part of the 2000 Appropriation Act.

Tuition and fees have gone up at public colleges since that freeze was lifted in the 2002-03 academic year.

"We've caught up pretty quickly" since the freeze, said Lee Andes, assistant director of financial aid for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

According to SCHEV, the total costs for an in-state student who enrolled at Tech last fall and lives on campus is $10,900. Fees and tuition for in-state Radford students who enrolled last fall is $11,250.

The average cost for four-year public colleges in Virginia is $12,259.

"It is just as affordable, if not more affordable," Simmons said of college now compared to 10 years ago.

SCHEV financial policy director Dan Hix said data show that to be true, at least when Virginia colleges are compared to those across the country.

By two different measures, Virginia's four-year public colleges were the second- and fifth-most expensive in the nation in 1993. Today, those same measures rank Virginia 12th and 15th.

While large tuition increases in 2003 and 2004 negated some of the progress made by the tuition freeze, increases have fallen back to about the national average the past two years.

New federal law means loans will cost more

But the legislation signed by Bush on Wednesday -- a deficit-reduction bill that will cut $11.9 billion from the federal student loan program over the next five years -- sends a troubling message about the federal government's priorities, Simmons said.

"It's an issue of robbing ... a very important domestic program to fund other initiatives," Simmons said. "Tax cuts as well as defense spending."

The bottom line, Simmons said, is that the loans are still available. The legislation will just increase interest rates and upfront fees.

It won't be an "absolute disaster" for college students, he said.

"If you've got the gumption, there are resources out there," he said.

"The loans are still going to be readily available. You're just going to end up with less money."

The government will save money by setting a fixed interest rate on federal student loans, which students have been able to refinance in the past.

Stafford student loans, which currently average 4.7 percent, will be bumped to a fixed rate around 6.8 percent.

PLUS parent loans will jump from 6.1 percent to a fixed rate of 8.5 percent.

About 10,000 Tech students used a Stafford loan last year while 2,000 parents used a PLUS loan.

Students looking for money, stay 'practical'

Richard Hartley, Roanoke's director of secondary school counseling programs, has seen more students turning to private sources for scholarships as tuition has increased.

With the new federal legislation on loans, he sees that trend continuing. While many private scholarships are small, they can add up.

"It's not unusual for a student to get significant financial aid through putting a variety of scholarship opportunities together," Hartley said.

"That diligent student ... will discover that there are many opportunities to make college more affordable."

Hartley encourages students to start looking for financial aid during their junior year of high school even though they have to wait until Jan. 1 of their senior year to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

On Super Saturday, parents and students worked with staff on computers to fill out that form while staff advised them on scholarships that are still available -- such as one for children of Tech employees.

While her father worked on the FAFSA form, Colby was busy talking to her friend Elizabeth Gichana.

A Blacksburg senior who's applied to Tech and the University of Michigan, Gichana hoped to find a way to get enough scholarship money to attend Michigan.

Gichana, who has three younger brothers and a father who is a professor at Radford University, wasn't all that optimistic -- despite all of the talk about different places to find money.

"I think Tech's going to be more practical," she said.