<p>All kinds of products have prices drop. Calculators, for one. NY-to-LA air travel. Computers. Buggy whips. Generic drugs.</p>
<p>JHS: Yes, you're right. It's competition did it.<br>
So, with the dollar being cheaper, lots more foreigners have decided to buy American. They come here to shop and they come here to study. Same reason Americans go to study at McGill. </p>
<p>And if non-American universities manage to attract foreign students, guess who'll feel the full withdrawal symptoms?</p>
<p>I think part of the reason private schools are so expensive is that admission to them is selective. Anything that is at all scarce is going to have a price attached. If you add increasing numbers of international students to your applicant pool, admission to your school will be more scarce and your tution will increase. I do not accept that the costs we are given for college are completely cost driven. I think they are what the market will tolerate.</p>
<p>mammall:
in fact, for OOS, some public schools can be nearly as expensive as private schools. If we think of foreign students as OOS and private schools charging OOS fees, then it makes more sense. Where the problem is acute is in top public schools that are becoming extremely competitive even for in-state students but are still going after foreign students.</p>
<p>Not quite true, Mammall. Though there is a scarcity of seats for the most selective schools, that is not the case for the majority of private schools in the country.. They are struggling to get full pay students. Admissions is not at all selective at those schools that need students. In the next several years, there is supposed to be a decrease in the age pool of college students which means that there is going to be even fiercer competition for students, especialy those who can pay full cost. I can believe that some of these schools are licking their chops at the prospects of a new pool of students that may pay our steep costs.</p>
<p>Don't know if the the devaluation of the dollar is so acute though that it is driving that many student here. It seems to me that there is a great divide in the groups of students coming here from overseas. Those that can fairly comfortably pay the amounts since they come from well to do families and those with so few resources, that the devalued dollar is not going to make a difference. It is only to those students who have families that are in the ballpark of being able to contemplate the costs of US college that are going to be affected by the dollar being worth less. I don't know how much of a difference it is going to make over all. Our colleges are still very, very expensive as compared to higher education elsewhere. And getting into the most competitive schools here is difficult, and a number of them have been need blind anyways. It's not like it's a two week vacation that is discounted. We are talking about a 4 year commitment and the costs can go up in that time as well.</p>