Are the elite colleges and universities worth their price of admission?

Degrees of Influence?

By WILLIAM D. COHAN
NYT

In the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors around the world will begin hearing from colleges and universities in this country about whether they have been lucky enough to be accepted for admission.

But will it turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory if they get in?

At the elite, private institutions the odds of admission are long — a mere 7.2 percent of Harvard’s more than 30,000 applicants were accepted a year ago — and the cost for those not receiving financial aid is incredibly high. This year, tuition and fees at Harvard are close to $52,000, including room and board, a price that has increased at about 5 percent annually during the past 20 years, well above the estimated 2.8 percent annualized increase in the consumer-price index, one gauge of inflation. As far as tuition increases go, Harvard’s arc is a pretty typical one.

Generally speaking, in order to pay just Harvard’s tuition, someone would have to earn more than $100,000 in annual pre-tax compensation. Then there are all the other family expenses — among them, gasoline, the mortgage, food and medical expenses. Multiply all that by four, and then by other children, and very quickly the numbers get astronomical.

(More here.)