<p>By the time current freshman graduate, it appears that cost of attendance for BU will be well over 50K per year. Why is that so much more to wrap your head around than the 45K that we started with?</p>
<p>My passing knowledge of numbers says that people tend to round down, as in "It's a little over $40k" so the number 50 seems to be a leap of 10k. </p>
<p>On a partly related subject, I wish better data were available for analyzing colleges. Harvard, for example, charges nothing to families making less than a certain $$ figure. BUT, they admit their classes have been getting wealthier overall AND they don't disclose the actual number of students getting free education NOR the amount those families would have had to pay before they changed the system. In other words, is this mostly a PR tactic to make Harvard sound more egalitarian than it is? (I suspect so.) We know, by contrast, that BU gives free rides to between 40 and 50 Boston public school students each year, plus a ton more, and that BU has a tiny endowment while Harvard's is $30B.</p>
<p>The more time I spend around college stuff, the more I realize how much is about PR - and that BU barely participates in that game. The airwaves here are filled with UMass ads - public school spending public dollars for what reason? - touting their Nobel prize winner. BU has 3. Can anyone name one other than Elie Wiesel?</p>
<p>I suspect BU's attitude is a holdover from the Silber era. If anyone is involved in the Parents' Program or alumni fundraising, you know they've barely begun their efforts - and these are where most schools concentrate.</p>