Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty In the fall of 2005, I visited Bates College, a small liberal-arts school 40 miles north of Portland, Maine, which that year had the distinction of being one of 75 colleges nationwide whose sticker price crossed the $40,000 threshold. I went there to report a story on how Bates set its tuition and fees because officials told me they agonized over whether they were nearing the point at which families would simply say, “Enough.” “It’s not that $40,