ND Tuition Hacks Me Off

[Blazers46]

This is a rant that will offend some of you.

I was researching college tuition prices - I have a 4 year old daughter, it’s never too early to start. I knew ND was an expensive ticket but $42,000/year. WTF! I was absolutely flattened and then outraged. I am solidly middle class in every way imaginable. My family is the absolute portrait of the America Dream - every basic need comfortably fulfilled and most wants and desires meet to a satisfactory degree. And I couldn’t touch 42 grand per year with a ten foot pole (Actually it will be closer to $65,000/yr given a 3% annualized tuition increase. That’s more than a quarter of million dollars by graduation, more than A-Rod will get paid in over the course of his contract and his 10 year contract is obscene).

How is that kind of figure in line with the concept of Catholic charity? For comparison sake, I researched other like sized Catholic schools. Boston College, St. John’s and Loyola Chicago all have tuition around $23,000 give or take. Depaul comes in at around $33,000. Now these numbers are by no means cheap but they are more competitive with other secular private schools - which is all I ask.

To broaden my comparison I went looking to the Ivies. And this is where I found comparable tuition rates. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell all have tuition rates comparable to ND’s. Harvard is north of $44,000 and Cornell has a blue light special price of $41,800. The others fall in between.

So what gives? With all due respect to the alums that visit this board an ND education isn’t $20,000 better than a St. John’s education.

Why would ND seek to associate itself in terms of tuition with schools viewed by most as elitist and unattainable? I can’t believe that the break even price for a ND education is $42,000 when other similar schools are doing it for much less in areas with much higher costs of living (Chicago, New York, Boston). And these schools don’t have even close to ND’s revenue stream. ND’s alums are to their credit some of the most generous in the country. And some give the schools millions of dollars just to have their name on the side of a building.

I know I will hear someone point out ND’s generous grants, scholarships and other financial aid packages. That’s fine and dandy but the other schools are doing the same thing at almost half the starting price.

If a suburban white girl from a family with the means to save for her college can’t afford ND then how can an inner city black girl from a destitute family even conceive of the notion?

Catholic charity, $42,000 per pupil? I’m officially hacked off.

Where did the 4 year old go?

 

[ab2cmiller]

Where did the 4 year old go?

Guff left IE 4 months after his little girl started college. No doubt he left with a broken heart because nobody cared enough to ask this important question.

 

[Me2SouthBend]

Where did the 4 year old go?

Did he really think ARod only got 250K in his 10 yr contract based on his OP? Perhaps he was missing a set of 3 zeroes?

 

[Blazers46]

Did he really think ARod only got 250K in his 10 yr contract based on his OP? Perhaps he was missing a set of 3 zeroes?

Girl didn’t stand a chance

 

[NorthDakota]

I had to lol when I opened the thread without checking the date and saw sticker price at ND was $42k. I was like...wow thats a great deal if you get some decent grants and scholarships lmao.

On a more serious note, it can be very daunting to see the sticker prices on private schools. Im sure many of you can relate. I almost shit bricks when I saw tuition at the law schools I applied to (ironically, a couple of them were on his list of more economical Catholic schools) - and then I got an acceptance with (I think) a 50% discount on tuition.

When I got to school, I dont know anyone who paid full. I'm sure there were a few? Anyway, maybe I was just a naive country bumpkin - just seeing the sticker price has to be frustrating for kids/parents.

 

[stlnd01]

I had to lol when I opened the thread without checking the date and saw sticker price at ND was $42k. I was like...wow thats a great deal if you get some decent grants and scholarships lmao.

On a more serious note, it can be very daunting to see the sticker prices on private schools. Im sure many of you can relate. I almost shit bricks when I saw tuition at the law schools I applied to (ironically, a couple of them were on his list of more economical Catholic schools) - and then I got an acceptance with (I think) a 50% discount on tuition.

When I got to school, I dont know anyone who paid full. I'm sure there were a few? Anyway, maybe I was just a naive country bumpkin - just seeing the sticker price has to be frustrating for kids/parents.

It's kind of a ridiculous process.
The only thing I can figure is that they keep the sticker price so high so they can milk a small handful of full-freight payers (not-very-bright kids from well-off families, wealthy foreign students who'll pay whatever it costs to go to school in the US) while offering discounts/aid/whatnot to a substantial portion of their admitted students so those kids come to their school instead of going somewhere else.
But also I'm sure those big numbers scare away some good students who would otherwise apply (and, if admitted, get $$ help). It's a bad system.

 

[ab2cmiller]

It's kind of a ridiculous process.
The only thing I can figure is that they keep the sticker price so high so they can milk a small handful of full-freight payers (not-very-bright kids from well-off families, wealthy foreign students who'll pay whatever it costs to go to school in the US) while offering discounts/aid/whatnot to a substantial portion of their admitted students so those kids come to their school instead of going somewhere else.
But also I'm sure those big numbers scare away some good students who would otherwise apply (and, if admitted, get $$ help). It's a bad system.

That is part of it, although I wouldn't even say it's the main factor.

I'll call it the "Kohl's Effect". My wife loves Kohl's. The main excitement revolves around the fact that she's thrilled about the amount of savings she's made on a purchase. If she buys something at Kohl's with a regular price of $100 and she's able to get it for $50 she is ecstatic. The interesting part is ..... NOTHING IS EVER REGULAR PRICE. Everything is always on sale. People could see the same item at Walmart for $55 and not even consider making the purchase. But if they see a $100 regular price at Kohls that they can get for $50 ..... it's the deal of a lifetime.

Colleges figured out a long time ago that they are able to draw more students by offering bigger scholarship amounts. It makes the prospective student feel good about themselves. If a prospective student is faced with the choice of attending school A with a sticker price of $50,000 but receiving a $20,000 scholarship OR school B with a sticker price of $28,000 with no scholarship, they will choose school A almost every time because they think school A must be a better school since it's large sticker price and they can tell their friends that they earned a huge scholarship.

Average discount rate for most private institutions is greater than 50%. Does this strategy scare some people off? Yes. But most people are smart enough to figure out pretty quickly that the pricing structure is just a game and they will still apply to see what the financial aid package looks like.