How much are you willing to pay for an Ivy League pedigree? Some schools with that sought-after education are testing parents’ limits yet again with another price hike to their already sky-high tuitions: Every single Ivy League college now charges upwards of $300,000 per student for four years of tuition, room, and board.
In 2022, the annual price of tuition, room, and board headed upward of $80,000 at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Brown, according to Bloomberg. Annual payments at Brown, Cornell, and UPenn are now nearly $85,000, while Dartmouth’s and Yale’s yearly fees hover around $84,000. Columbia, meanwhile, is just under $82,000 for its 2022-2023 school year, and Princeton and Harvard have shown themselves to be the relatively affordable options, with costs coming in around $76,000 for the current school year.
Economist Beth Akers told Bloomberg these institutions are risking becoming obsolete by continuing to raise their prices to such staggering rates: “At some point, that math stops working out,” she said. “We get to a place where these degrees are just no longer worth it.”
As inflation continues and the cost of running these institutions continues to rise, however, the Ivy Leagues may not be the ones to break first in this game of chicken with America’s wealthiest and most ambitious families. Asset manager Commonfund found that the price of running a college went up by over 5 percent in 2022, which Bloomberg notes is the most that operational costs have increased in a single year since 2001.
While these colleges range in having 44 percent to around 67 percent of their students receive financial aid, the rising costs can be prohibitive. As a new generation seriously considers the value of an Ivy League education, these institutions have given themselves a high, high price tag to live up to.
