Here are two ways to think about the price of college tuition:

1. Sticker price is the full price colleges list in their brochures and on their websites.

2. Net price is the price students actually pay. Net price accounts for the fact that many students receive grants or scholarships. So it can be considerably lower than sticker price.

Quick example. Say you go to a school where the sticker price is $25,000 a year. You get a $10,000-a-year grant. The net price for you — the part you have to pay for through loans, work and a contribution from my family — is $15,000 a year.

Here's the average sticker price and average net price for tuition and fees at public and private colleges in the U.S. over the past 15 years:

Notes

Prices do not include room and board. Numbers are adjusted for inflation in constant 2011 dollars.

Source: College Board

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

Enlarge Christine Baker/The Patriot-News

David Unkovic, just before he fled the scene.

Christine Baker/The Patriot-News

David Unkovic, just before he fled the scene.

David Unkovic tried to save Harrisburg, the broke capital city of Pennsylvania.

He was Harrisburg's receiver, which means he was appointed to take charge of the city's very troubled finances.

But his plan to save the city ran into political trouble, and Unkovic abruptly fled Harrisburg, leaving nothing but a scrawled, handwritten note. "I find myself in an untenable position in the political and ethical crosswinds," the letter said, "and am no longer in a position to effectuate a solution."

He has pretty much stayed out of sight since. Until today.

Today, Harrisburg got a new receiver to run the city finances: Air Force Major General William B. Lynch. The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania called Unkovic in for the appointment. Unkovic showed up in his traditional bow tie. His remarks were limited but intense, as is his style.

The city's creditors were "trying to put [him] in a box" so he could no longer do his job, Unkovic said today, according to the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Unkovic also intimated today that he'd been told he was going to be fired by the state. By the end of his time as receiver, Unkovic flew off the handle in a few press conferences. He called the city "a house of cards," and the next day, named names of people who'd been involved in the financing of the incinerator that got the city into trouble. Among others, he named a former lobbyist, a state senator, and the former mayor of Harrisburg. State officials deny they told Unkovic he was going to be fired.

Sadly for those reporters who are fascinated by Unkovic's struggle and disappearance, he would not speak to the press today.

Amin Tabrizi/Flickr

"Finance ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro agreed earlier this week on the need to develop national contingency plans in case Greece drops out of the common currency, officials said." - WSJ

This is awkward, because you're really not supposed to talk about this sort of thing out loud. You're supposed to say, as Angela Merkel said again this week, "We want Greece to remain in the eurozone."

But what if? What if you were a eurozone finance minister and your job right now was to protect your financial system in case of a Greek exit?

Enlarge Koichi Kamoshida /Getty Images

A rainbow over the sea in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.

Koichi Kamoshida /Getty Images

A rainbow over the sea in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.

The Northern Mariana Islands are about 4,000 miles west of Hawaii. They look like the kind of tropical islands you see in the movies with bright blue water and white sand beaches.

The people who live on the islands are American. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a U.S. territory. And just like a lot of U.S. states, the commonwealth has a pension plan for its government employees.

Sixto Igisomar used to run it.

"We always say that the CNMI pension plan is the best pension plan within the United States because the benefits were very good, " Sixto says.

They used to say that. Last month, the pension fund became the first public pension fund in the U.S. to seek bankruptcy protection.

DALTON, Mass. – If you were driving through this small town along the Housatonic River in the Berkshires, here's something you might not think about: All the bills in your wallet are visiting their birthplace.

The paper for U.S. currency, the substrate of everyday commerce, has been made here since 1879 by the Crane family.

Crane & Co. vice president Doug Crane represents the eighth generation descended from Stephen Crane, who was making paper before the American Revolution.

He gave NPR reporters a behind-the-scenes tour and talked about his company.

David L. Ryan/Boston Globe via Getty Images

Mitt Romney, back in his Bain Capital days.

Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital is back in the news this week. We did two stories earlier this year on deals Bain did while Romney was running the firm — one of those deals went badly, the other one worked out well. Here are excerpts, and links to the full stories.

Nick Sherman/Flickr

Pizza Delicious bought an ad on Facebook.

On today's show, we follow a couple guys who run a pizza shop in New Orleans as they buy their first Facebook ad. We visit a business in New Jersey that sells Facebook "likes" in bulk. And we check in with a business school professor who explains what Facebook would have to do to live up to its valuation — which, even after its post-IPO fall, is still roughly $90 billion.

For More, see our stories from last week:

* Is Facebook Worth $100 Billion?

* Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How'd It Do?

* For $75, This Guy Will Sell You 1,000 Facebook 'Likes'

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courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Toxie, Planet Money's toxic asset, has a new home. She used to sit in my desk drawer — 300 some worn pages, marked with post-its. But a few weeks ago, a curator from the Museum of the City of New York came to take custody of her. She's now on display as part of an exhibit about banking in New York.

I went to the opening last night. She was in a proper display case befitting an artifact of the financial crisis. The plaque read "Prospectus for Harbor View Mortgage Loan Trust 2005-10, CUSIP #41161PUA9, or "Toxie," issued 2005.

If you're in town, the exhibit runs through October 21^st.

STR/Associated Press

Syrian President Bashar Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf, Syria's most influential businessman, looks on during the laying the foundation stone of a hotel project, in Damascus, Syria.

This week in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes about the surprising diversity of Syria's economy. There are pockets of affluence in the cities, a budding private sector, and even a few American franchises.

There is also a government official who embodies everything that's wrong with Syria's economy. His name is Rami Makhlouf, the cousin of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. His nickname is "Mr. Ten Percent," because he knows how to get a cut of any business deal in Syria.

Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, explained how it works. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad passed a series of economic reforms which allowed entrepreneurs without government connections to open their own businesses. But there was a catch. If the business didn't pay a cut to corrupt officials, "they could punch you in a hundred different ways," said Landis. "They could force you to sell, tax you, or revoke your permission to change the sewage or electric lines."

Ultimately, Landis says, the reforms created a class of crony capitalists, angering the independent merchants who hoped that they might mark a turning point in Syria's economy. So why hasn't Syria's business class turned against the regime? Read the full column to find out.

Larry Crowe/AP

This is not a Vegas Strip Steak.

"It's an un-obvious chunk of meat that has been sitting there — a little diamond surrounded by a bunch of coal," Steve Price told me. "I'd love to tell you more. We just can't."

Price works at Oklahoma State University. The school says it has worked with an outside meat expert to discover a new steak. It's hiding somewhere inside a part of a cow that's now commonly used for hamburger.

The steak has a name — the Vegas Strip Steak (TM) — and a marketing campaign. But, because OSU is still waiting on its patent, they are being cagey about the details. Price explained it to me in broad strokes.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Queen Charlotte Sophia, wife of King George III and the original celebrity endorser.

This week in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes about companies that spend a fortune on marketing to signal to shoppers that they have money to burn. We asked Nancy Koehn, a retail historian at Harvard, to explain where this practice came from and why it's here to stay.

The idea of signaling is not brand new. Companies have been signaling for decades, centuries even, using enticing packaging and pricey celebrity endorsements to showcase something special about their brand.

More than 200 years ago, long before the term "branding" had entered the business lexicon, British entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood used signaling to set his china apart from competitors' goods. In 1765, for example, Wedgwood produced a cream-colored tea set for King George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, which resulted in his appointment as "Potter to her Majesty."

Bloomberg/via Getty Images

Don't call it a mullet.

When Bart Chilton was 13, he played piano in a band called Shades. The band members always wore sunglasses. They played mostly in Chilton's living room.

Today, Chilton says, he plays a little piano, a little guitar and a little harp, by which he means harmonica. He has a day job as a commissioner of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

The CFTC is the federal regulator for derivatives, which makes Chilton responsible for overseeing one of the most complex and important corners of modern finance.

Chilton has a habit of sprinkling his speeches with references to popular music. It can be a bit jarring to see a reference to, say, Tom Petty, in a speech called "Statement by Commissioner Bart Chilton Regarding Anti-Fraud and Anti-Manipulation Final Rules":

Chana Joffe-Walt/NPR

Ashley Dias is 26 years old. She has cystic fibrosis. About six weeks ago, her lungs gave out. She was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic and told she'd need a lung transplant to survive.

Lungs are a scarce resource. But unlike many scarce resources, lungs aren't for sale. So doctors have had to develop a system to allocate them.

Ashley's life depends on that system.

Subscribe. Music: Florence + The Machine's "Heartlines." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify/ Tumblr.

Amy the Nurse/Flickr

Mark Zuckerberg is, among many other things, the highest-profile taxpayer on the planet today.

After today's Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg will owe nearly $200 million in California state taxes alone. That's "among the largest tax liabilities that a single individual has ever paid at a given point in time," says Jason Sisney of the California State Budget Legislative Analyst's Office.

Zuckerberg's profits will be taxed at a 10% rate in California. That's a much higher rate than in many other states.

In all, Facebook's employees and early investors are expected to pay about $2 billion in California state taxes over the next 13 months. But California is almost 16 billion dollars in the hole. Facebook won't solve that problem.

Would that big, bad JPMorgan Chase trade have violated the Volcker Rule?

It's too soon to say, despite the fact that the rule is part of a two-year-old law.

The Volcker Rule bans deposit-taking banks from making speculative bets. But it allows banks to make investments to hedge risks.

Whether the JPMorgan trade counts as a hedge gone horribly wrong (and therefore kosher under Volcker), or as a speculative bet (and therefore prohibited) depends in part on the details of how the rule is written.

And those details have yet to be finalized.

The rule was included in the Dodd-Frank act, the big financial-reform bill that Congress passed in 2010. It was a few pages long in the statute.

The proposed details of how the rule will be implemented run to hundreds of pages. Five different regulatory agencies are collaborating. And the banks are weighing in with their own, extensive comments.

This long, slow implementation isn't unusual at all. It's entirely typical. Dodd-Frank called for hundreds of new rules; only 27 percent of those have been finalized, according to this recent report (PDF).

The details of the Volcker Rule are likely to be finalized later this year. But the regulators recently said banks will have until 2014 to comply fully with the final rule — four years after Dodd-Frank was passed, and six years after the financial crisis.