Colleges routinely boast about being “need blind” in admissions, meaning that they consider applicants without regard to their ability to pay. But even if they are need blind, and a new survey suggests they are, that may be very different from being an institution that any academically qualified student can actually attend.

That’s because only a small subset of colleges pledges to meet the full need of all students they admit. That means that for most institutions, “gapping” has become the norm. That’s when a college admits a student, tells her that she probably needs $X to afford to enroll, and then provides a package that is less than $X — sometimes considerably so.

Need Blind, but ‘Gapping’ : Scott Jaschik.

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PITTSBURGH—Although state lotteries, on average, return just 53 cents for every dollar spent on a ticket, people continue to pour money into them — especially low-income people, who spend a larger percentage of their incomes on lottery tickets than do the wealthier segments of society. A new Carnegie Mellon University study sheds light on the reasons why low-income lottery players eagerly invest in a product that provides poor returns.

In the study, published in the July issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, participants who were made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets as a comparison group that was made to feel subjectively more affluent. The Carnegie Mellon findings point to poverty’s…