Is there a legitimate way to beat the average college tuition cost these days?

That was a question my wife and I had as our son was close to completing his senior year of high school. We did some painful research and discovered that average college costs had increased "a little" from 30 years ago when we attended college.

When I say " a little", I mean a little too much to believe. State college tuition for 1 year in 1978 was around $1000 in the South. Now, you are looking at $6000 - $8000 a year.

This is outrageous. And I am not even including room and board or miscellaneous expenses. It gets even more unbelievable. If you look at the private universities, tuition shoots even higher to around $30,000 a year or more. Harvard University, here I come.

Our son wanted to get a bachelor's degree in business. We didn't know how we could possibly afford it though. We were not going to go the route of student loans either.

We found out that necessity truly brings forth inventive ideas. Or maybe it was just stubbornness on our part. Whatever it was, we were determined to find a way to make this work, and did we get the surprise of our lives.

There is actually a very simple way to slash the average college tuition cost.

You can do this by using 2 testing credit services: CLEP and DANTES.

Both of these testing service programs provide a college student with the opportunity to obtain college credits in a variety of courses.

CLEP offers 33 college level courses in literature, the foreign languages, history and social sciences, science and mathematics, and business.

DANTES originally was developed for military personnel, but is now available to anyone. They offer testing credits in 38 different college level courses. Their courses also cover a variety of subject areas such as math, social sciences, humanities, business, physical science, and technology.

How much can you save with this strategy?

You can easily save more than 50% from the cost of college tuition.

These tests are taken at testing centers across the country. All you need to do is find a center close to you and register to take a test of your choice. These tests are almost all multiple choice, but you definitely need to be well prepared.

We have done it and so can you if you take the right steps to get prepared!