<p>For the first time ever, the government is ranking American colleges and universities by affordability.</p>
<p>Using a new interactive tool launched by the Department of Education, students and parents can search public and private colleges by not only their published tuition prices, but also by their "net price" -- the average costs after tuition, room and board, book fees and financial aid are all taken into consideration.</p>
<p>The tool, called the College Affordability and Transparency Center, was mandated by education reforms passed by Congress in 2008, and is meant to reveal the true costs of going to college.</p>
<p>Here are the 10 most expensive schools, ranked by net price for the 2008-2009 academic year -- the most recent data available. We included only colleges in the 50 U.S. states with undergraduate enrollments of 5,000 or more.</p>
<p>The list basically names a group of overpriced, undistinguished schools that burden its students with "aid" in the form of huge loans. This is embarrassing for NYU and is probably not a list it wants to appear on. I'm not surprised though.</p>
<p>NYU is distinguished, both nationally and internationally, by its highly-regarded professional schools of business, law, and medicine, and by its NYC location and location in NYC.</p>
<p>The cost of living and learning in the city may be high, which this ranking fails to take into account, but on what basis can you argue that all, most, or many NYU undergraduates bear the burden of high loans?</p>
<p>NYU clearly states on their own website that they do not meet full need. It is no surprise (and I don’t believe that they care). They recognize that there are plenty of wealthy who will pay full freight to send their kid to the Big Apple.</p>
<p>With the exception of NYU, I think the sticker prices of the schools listed here are too pricey for their profile. My point in the op was that as a highly regarded school, NYU should follow its peers and make it a priority to stop burdening it’s students with huge loans.</p>
<p>According to data published in the US News 2011 online edition and presumably provided by NYU itself, NYU meets on average 64% of the need of its undergraduates. Among 2009 NYU graduates, 59% had borrowed money to attend college, and they graduated with an average debt load of $33,487, one of the highest average debt burdens among top-50 ranked universities, public or private.</p>
<p>Bottom line, NYU is expensive, and its FA is weak.</p>
<p>Agreed. I would also like to point even though 59% borrowed money to attend NYU. I wonder how many turned down to NYU so they would not graduate with a serious amount of debt.</p>
<p>If they have the endowment, I guess they could but Why should they? It is clear that NYU is happy attracting the rich and famous (Olson Twins) as well as just regular wealthy folks who can pay full freight. They then give merit money to kids with top stats. It is win-win for them. Sure, NYU misses out on an “economically diverse” student body, but so what? Many private colleges are 50-65% full pay, and not economically diverse. Heck, a certain public college in Charlottesville was recently taken to task for its own lack of diversity.</p>
<p>Well, in fairness, NYU doesn’t have the endowment to allow it to be generous with FA. Its endowment in 2010 was $2.37 billion, the 24th largest among U.S. colleges and universities according to NACUBO data. That may sound like a lot, but when you consider it’s a school with over 43,000 students (undergraduate and graduate), it works out to a little less than $55,000 per student. At a standard endowment payout rate of 5%, that would give NYU about $2,750 per student per year to work with in endowment-generated income. So as a practical matter, most of the grants and scholarships it gives out are going to be funded by full-pays’ tuition.</p>
<p>Now if someone dropped another $15 billion or $20 billion into NYU’s endowment, one suspects they might rethink their FA policies. But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.</p>