The purposes of this paper are as follows : 1) We analyze how school expenses have risen since 1968, and how parents and students have met them. 2) We examine whether the relative differences between the expenses of students who live at home and those who board ; and the expenses of students who go to national universities and those who go to private universities influence the choices of high school students who intend to go on to university. 3) We clarify how parents and students share school expenses and how school expenses are a burden on them. We used the “Gakusei Seikatsu Chosa” [Student Lifestyles Survey] data to analyze 1) and 2), and we interviewed 59 students (31 men and 28 women ; 30 of these were national university students and 29 private university students) to clarify 3).

　 The findings of this article are as follows : 1) School expenses have risen rapidly since 1976 and they have been a burden on most parents but not as much on students. The lifestyle of the average student has been getting more comfortable to a certain extent. 2) The relative differences between expenses for home and board, and for national and private universities influence the choices of high school students. 3) Apart from ordinary students, there are some students who share a large part of school expenses by working at a parttime job. These part time jobs, however, are a burden on their study time.

　 Three political implications are abtained from this study. The first is that all students should not be subsidized equally. The second is that student aid programs are much more necessary in order to forward the universalization of higher education, which involves a large element of disadvantaged students. The third is that the issue of what student aid programs should be like still has to be argued.