BOSTON -- It's graduation season, time for college seniors to celebrate good friends and hard work -- and the end of those ever-rising tuition payments.

But financial freedom may have to wait a week or two. From cap and gown rentals to printed announcements to jacked-up hotel prices, pomp and circumstance doesn't come cheap these days. Some schools even charge explicit graduation fees of up to $160.

"All this stuff together, it's definitely surprising that after four years of paying $40,000 a year," said Matt Stout, a Boston University senior from East Haven, Conn. "I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars just to get out of here."

His mother, Annie McGuire, a social worker and waitress, has been setting aside money in her credit union account since December to cover the hotel and other expenses for commencement weekend. "It's well worth it," she said.

Still, multiply one family's graduation expenses -- roughly $1,100 in Stout's case -- by the hundreds of thousands of students graduating from college in the coming weeks, and you've got one very big business.

It's hard to say how much Americans spend on the full range of graduation expenses -- from bric-a-brac to travel and meals -- but it's ample. Class rings seem to be rebounding from an unfashionable period, and despite e-mail, written announcements are surprisingly resilient, especially in the South. The parent company of Jostens, one of the biggest sellers of rings, yearbooks and diploma frames, reported sales of $425 million last year in its scholastic business.
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