its not so much 'sussing out tricks' as a blanket ban on anything that can be abused. My parents made roughly 100k when I was going to school but they were terrible with money and have a lot of children. The 'expected contribution' was actually quite high but I never received anything from my parents at all. Thus, I have much in the way of student loans.

Not to take away from your point but the colleges having to work against these sort of tricks has a lot of unintended consequences.