https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/your-money/paying-for-college/100k-college-cost-vanderbilt.html

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Paying for College|Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year.
How Did This Happen?
  
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/your-money/paying-for-college/
100k-college-cost-vanderbilt.html

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Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen?

Some Vanderbilt students will have $100,000 in total expenses for the
2024-25 school year. The school doesn't really want to talk about it.

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An illustration of a college graduate framed with a giant $100,000
bill.
Credit...Robert Neubecker
Ron Lieber

By Ron Lieber

Ron Lieber reported from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

April 5, 2024Updated 4:57 p.m. ET

It was only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to
quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. This spring,
we're catching our first glimpse of it.

One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering
student showed an all-in price -- room, board, personal expenses, a
high-octane laptop -- of $98,426. A student making three trips home to
Los Angeles or London from the Nashville campus during the year could
hit six figures.

This eye-popping sum is an anomaly. Only a tiny fraction of
college-going students will pay anything close to this anytime soon,
and about 35 percent of Vanderbilt students -- those who get neither
need-based nor merit aid -- pay the full list price.

But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast
majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within
a few years. Their willingness to cross it raises two questions for
anyone shopping for college: How did this happen, and can it possibly
be worth it?

Who Pays What

According to the College Board, the average 2023-24 list price for
tuition, fees, housing and food was $56,190 at private, nonprofit
four-year schools. At four-year public colleges, in-state students
saw an average $24,030 sticker price.

That's not what many people pay, though, not even close. As of the
2019-20 school year, according to federal data that the College Board
used in a 2023 report, 39 percent of in-state students attending
two-year colleges full-time received enough grant aid to cover all of
their tuition and fees (though not their living expenses, which can
make getting through school enormously difficult). At four-year
public schools, 31 percent paid nothing for tuition and fees while 18
percent of students at private colleges and universities qualified
for the same deal.

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