Wil private school tuitions come down?
Wacky Chinaman has no kids, but I have been aware of rising tuition at private schools and universities for some time now, mainly from talking to colleagues at work and other friends who have just had babies.
I attended a private high school and also ended up going to a private university as well, and in both cases, the tuition has more than doubled over the past decade. I've often heard friends with newborns talking about saving for college and feeling overwhelmed, since at the current rate of tuition increases, they have found that they need to put aside an exorbitant amount of dollars if they have any chance of paying for their kids' college education, let alone high school. It is usually at this point that I suggest that dogs are cheaper alternative than kids, and that in all probability, dogs will end up loving you more. Yeah, it's a wonder I have any friends at all.
I haven't done any rigorous analysis on this at all, but I've always wondered if it was really accurate to assume that tuition would continue to increase at the same yearly rate. After all, the economy has been booming for a while now, and at the risk of sounding pessimistic, it seems unrealistic to assume that the economy will continue to boom at the nearly the same rate for the next 18 years. Put another way, should we really expect private school tuition to double again in ten years?
This is on my mind, not because I'm reaching that age where one thinks about kids, but because this article in the NY Times has got me thinking about this again. Apparently, the recession is causing many folks to think about withdrawing their kids from private school, because they can no longer afford $22K for a year of kindergarten. Unknown is whether or not the shrinking demand is enough to cause a slow down in tuition hikes (after all, there are probably still long waiting lists for enrollment). But in these uncertain times, I'm not betting against it happening.
I attended a private high school and also ended up going to a private university as well, and in both cases, the tuition has more than doubled over the past decade. I've often heard friends with newborns talking about saving for college and feeling overwhelmed, since at the current rate of tuition increases, they have found that they need to put aside an exorbitant amount of dollars if they have any chance of paying for their kids' college education, let alone high school. It is usually at this point that I suggest that dogs are cheaper alternative than kids, and that in all probability, dogs will end up loving you more. Yeah, it's a wonder I have any friends at all.
I haven't done any rigorous analysis on this at all, but I've always wondered if it was really accurate to assume that tuition would continue to increase at the same yearly rate. After all, the economy has been booming for a while now, and at the risk of sounding pessimistic, it seems unrealistic to assume that the economy will continue to boom at the nearly the same rate for the next 18 years. Put another way, should we really expect private school tuition to double again in ten years?
This is on my mind, not because I'm reaching that age where one thinks about kids, but because this article in the NY Times has got me thinking about this again. Apparently, the recession is causing many folks to think about withdrawing their kids from private school, because they can no longer afford $22K for a year of kindergarten. Unknown is whether or not the shrinking demand is enough to cause a slow down in tuition hikes (after all, there are probably still long waiting lists for enrollment). But in these uncertain times, I'm not betting against it happening.
