Examples of instructional costs per student:
(source:http://www.collegemeasures.org/4-year_colleges/college-performance-rank/#)
Private Universities
$100817 Yale
$95618 WUSTL
$88998 JHU
$81304 CalTech
$77816 Columbia
$67085 Vanderbilt
$66020 UChicago
$65044 Stanford
$55215 Duke
$44835 UPenn
…
$13736 Syracuse
$13707 Texas Christion
$13583 U. San Diego
$13578 UDenver
$13223 Northeastern
$12648 Baylor
$12646 Pepperdine
$12399 American
$12238 U San Francisco
$12038 U St. Thomas
Private LACs
$34588 Williams
$30845 Wellesley
$28918 Pomona
$27841 Bard
$26928 Middlebury
…
$13244 Illinois Wesleyan
$13146 Westmont
$13082 Willamette
$13081 Hobart Wm Smith
$13056 Bennington
Public Universities
$36961 UCLA
$26876 UNC-CH
$25566 Washington-Seattle
$24812 Illinois-Chicago
$24679 Penn State
$24403 Colorado-Denver
$22094 UCSD
$20761 Michigan-AA
$20552 Rutgers
$20404 UC-Davis
…
$8535 Nebraska-Lincoln
$8416 Louisiana State A&M
$8384 Illinois State
$8384 Oklahoma State
$8330 Bowling Green
There does appear to be some correlation between costs and academic quality (or at least, the USNWR/Forbes rank).
Various factors may be confounding this correlation (such as location, size & economies of scale, or the relative costs of graduate/professional school v. undergraduate faculty). Is Yale’s instructional quality 2x better than Duke’s? Probably not. Nevertheless, I do think one would tend to find significantly better instruction for similar classes from schools in the top cluster than from schools in the bottom cluster.
