Oh. Em. Gee. What has happened in the past few years??? My S2 graduated five years ago and we used to marvel that a few schools were topping $50K per year. And now it seems that a COA of $65K is not uncommon (e.g., Oberlin). How is anyone able to even begin to cope with that. I predict $70K by next year.
Drexel COA is $69.2K per year. I believe that NYU is $70K per year.
No sympathy here. There are good schools at all price points. If you can’t afford a $70k school, you shouldn’t go to one.
If you think this is bad, you should see the cost of MBA programs. It’s at least $20K higher, in many instances.
I am sympathetic to anyone who thinks they need to pay that kind of money for an education, especially those who believe it but can’t afford it. The gymnastics some families go through to dig up the money for expensive colleges are really sad. Some families don’t do gymnastics at all and still get into trouble. The costs are something they reasonably think they can afford…until they can’t. All they need is one serious financial downturn (a lost job, a long term illness or sudden disability, a divorce, etc.) and they’re in big trouble.
That’s why I like our SUNY system so much. Students can commute to one of our 4-year schools and graduate with little to no debt or start at one of our many cc’s and transfer to a 4-year SUNY and still come out without owing a fortune. They’re very good schools at very reasonable prices. I don’t think residents of some of the other states are as lucky.
And that is why parents need to evaluate what they can afford, and tell the kid that before applications. “We will figure it out when you get accepted” can lead to a financial shut out.
For many students, the NET cost (after merit and need-based institutional aid, state and federal aid and scholarships) has not risen nearly as fast as the sticker prices. However, there are still plenty of very expensive colleges that offer crappy financial aid.
This fall we are taking a deep “financial breath”. One at an Ivy, the other starting at a UC (OOS tuition)–combined with room and board, our out of pocket will be just north of 120K. Happy to pay for their education as we make enough ( we have our own rule of thumb, like mortgage folks recommend no more than 1/3 of gross income, we subscribe that to be in a safe financial area, no more than 1/5 of gross income goes to tuition), but its going to eliminate a whole lot of lattes…a whole lot.
MBA tuition list prices are now insane. However, at pretty much no b-school now does close to 100% of the student body pay the full list price.
Most b-schools offer merit money to some students these days, and the b-schools that don’t (HBS, Stanford, and Sloan come to mind) have generous fin aid programs.
That’s true with undergrad as well. At no school does anywhere close to 100% of the student body pay the full list price (or OOS price at a public). In fact, at most schools, 50% or less pay the full list price.
I wonder what the full pay percentage at colleges like College of Marin or Cañada College is (community colleges in wealthy areas).
@PurpleTitan If you know any families that have kids, interested in top bschools, that are either AA, Latino or Native American, one of the best scholarships out there is called the Consortium. So, while not including every top 20 B school, it includes Yale SOM, Tuck, Stern, Ross, Darden, Olin, etc for a full tuition scholarship. Almost unheard of for professional education—see:http://www.cgsm.org/member-schools/
Surprised there is not a stampede to Canadian schools which offer comparable quality at a lower price for full pay students. McGill, University of Toronto and Waterloo (for certain majors) offer quite good value.
I guess this (raising tuition) can make sense, but sometimes I think the school’s are being hoisted on their own petard.
When you have these different prices created by fictional “scholarships” (as though the school ever actually received the full tuition), it creates an incentive for the school to look very carefully at the full-pay candidates. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with marginal students from high income families, and you’ll pass up smart kids from more modest means. Further, because of the fiction involved, only people who are savvy enough to use cost of attendance calculators and financial aid predictors know what their actual cost is likely to be. The rest of the people are shocked at the tuition number (as in this thread) and look elsewhere. Is it really worth it to extract an extra 5,000 from a couple dozen students when the price is that everyone sees that as your tuition expense?
I think some schools have been lowering tuition in an attempt to step back from this problem, but I’m not sure how well its working. They’re in a small minority. I wonder what would happen if a school just set its tuition at about 15-20K and gave no “discounts”. Obviously it depends on which school.
Plenty of colleges out there that do not cost $70,000 a year.
@HarvestMoon1, many Americans are parochial, but more are applying to Canadian schools. Also, Canadian unis tend to have different tuition for different majors, so while lib arts majors may have a steal up north, engineering tuition at UToronto isn’t much cheaper than OOS engineering tuition at UW-Madison and GTech, so why wouldn’t American kids go there and get the full American college experience instead?
I think this happens every few years. I remember when COA was $25K/yr and went up to $30k/yr and the same thing was said. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
Agree with post #14. My kid was interested in Canadian universities but for his major they are much more than our state flagship. Also does not work if the reason that you are looking for privates is that you actually would like a small school.
My districts usually has a few kids every year who go to McGill. We’re only 3 hours from Montreal so it’s convenient, too.
I think perhaps the economics of Canandian versus a US university is case specific. For instance Waterloo’s computer science program is rated in the top 10 in North America and many US companies hire out of Waterloo. According to their “budget calculator” a US citizen can attend for $33,000 Canadian or roughly $27,000 US. That includes tuition, room and meal plan. Compare that to a Carnegie Mellon, MIT, UCB or Stanford for a full pay student. I think a Waterloo grad could expect reasonably comparable employment prospects as those graduating from the top US schools.
And for this student McGill also offered better financial value: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/24/17882085-americans-head-north-for-affordable-college-degrees?lite
Yes, I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself