Actually, Riddle is soliciting donations on its website, to help cover the costs of repairing the damage from the Christmas tornado. Just out of curiousity, I did a Google search on them and found a wikipedia page for the school. I learned some interesting things from it. First of all, it says that Riddle is a *non-profit* institution. I'll have to dig around some more to confirm that.... It also says that Riddle is one of the most expensive private schools in the entire nation and the costs quoted *dont* include flight training or on-campus housing. There were some links off of the Wikipedia site to other articles about that, some from the Daytona Beach student newspaper. Supposedly, the tuition increases are in line with the CPI, in order to keep up with inflation, but I can tell you from personal experience that is a bunch of crap. They have passed through tuition increases twice a year the entire time that I have gone there, with the net result of their tuition has gone up much faster than inflation. The Wikipedia article also says that 85% of their operating funds come from tuition.
Riddle students graduate with one of the highest average debt loads of any college or university in the US.
Full disclosure: I am not an aero-sci student, and have attended a state university in the past. However, I am an ERAU student. I picked them to finish my degree because they have what I consider to be a decent online educational program. My current employer is footing most of the bill for it. I do my flying at a local FBO.
In addition to asking around on this site about ERAU, it would pay to do some other searches online as well.