Several colleges have driven tuition prices up to nearly $100,000 knowing taxpayers will foot much of the bill through the federal financial aid system.
Schools including Tufts University, Wellesley College, Boston University, and Yale University announced they are each charging more than $90,000 in tuition for the 2024-2025 academic year, with Tufts’s tuition at $95,888.
Some of the schools appear to be relying on generous financial aid offers to cover the majority of their exorbitant rates.
“College degrees have become overpriced because colleges know that, at the end of the day, Uncle Sam and the taxpayers will pick up a big part of the tab for ridiculously high tuition, room, and board,” Bob Eitel, president of education-focused Defense of Freedom Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “Federal money is there for the taking, and students and schools will take it, without regard to the true value of the education a school provides the student.”
“President Biden’s loan cancellation orgy has only made the problem worse,” said Eitel, former senior counselor to Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. “The system is totally broken.”
While wealthier families may be stuck with massive bills for their child to attend some of the elite schools, less wealthy families could see disproportionately low tuitions, even below in-state tuition for public universities.
Wellesley College economics professor Phillip Levine told the Associated Press that while the sticker price of tuition may be jarring for some families, many students will not end up paying that.
“Ninety thousand dollars clearly is a lot of money, and it catches people’s attention, for sure,” he said. “But for most people, that is not how much they’re going to pay. The existence of a very generous financial aid system lowers that cost substantially.”
Students who want to attend Wellesley will actually see a price tag of $92,060 for tuition, room, and board, but the school notes that an estimated 60% of its students will receive financial aid, with an average offer of $62,000, meaning students eligible for aid will pay an average price of $30,060.
Curating financial aid offers for students has been a chaotic endeavor this year, as the Department of Education has fumbled the rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Because of multiple failures at the federal level, the Education Department finally cleared its backlog of financial aid data at the end of last week, several months later than the normal time frame, truncating university operations to only weeks.
Critics have pointed out that those delays are causing major problems for families who need to make decisions on whether their student can afford to go to college this year. Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told the Washington Examiner that often when students are forced to delay going to college for a year, they never end up returning.
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Levine told the Associated Press that families shocked by high on-paper tuition prices could drive students away from applying to certain institutions. Other schools above the $90,000 mark include University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Dartmouth College.
The high cost deterrent coincides with recent data showing prospective college students are more skeptical of the value of a college degree, with a growing number of high school students only rating the value of a college degree in the middle of the pack relative to alternatives such as certifications and trade school.