Posted on 09/03/2026 10:10:33 AM PDT by Libloather
Caveat emptor!
The number of colleges that cost more than $100,000 per year to attend has sky-rocketed this year — but few of these pricey schools offer a strong return on investment, according to rankings.
Fifteen higher ed institutions cracked the six-figure pricetag this year, up from a just two the previous year, according to an analysis from the the Washington Post.
That means students at those schools will be shelling out nearly a half-million dollars over four years of schooling.
Another another nine colleges were also mere dollars away from breaking the six-figure mark, data from the Princeton Review showed.
The most expensive schools in the US are:
Harvey Mudd College, Calif. — $104,512
Duke University, NC — $103,975
University of Chicago, Ill. — $103,821
University of Southern California, Ill. — $103,162
Barnard College, NY — $103,000
Washington University, Mo. — $102,260
Smith College, Mass. — $102,226
Fordham University, NY — $102,188
Claremont McKenna College, Calif. — $101,990
Vassar College, NY — $101,051
Wesleyan University, Conn. — $101,030
New York University, NY — $100,998
Georgetown University, DC — $100,864
Colgate University, NY — $100,224
Haverford College, Penn. — $100,026
Ivy League schools Brown, Columbia and Cornell were close behind, each charging just under $100,000 per year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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I went to a small liberal arts school (when they were $5K a year).
If you want to study in a seminar with six other students and have the full attention of a professor who is really brilliant, then that’s the way to go. There’s no limit to how much you can learn - if you want to learn.
I am more shocked by the quality of the schools on the list than I am by the cost.
Those are not even prestigious schools.
Foreign students...
Join the club!
I went to MIT undergraduate and Harvard for a PhD. I had scholarships, loans, and part-time and summer jobs to pay for MIT, and a very nice NSF Graduate Fellowship to pay for Harvard!
Of course, I had to earn the NSF Graduate Fellowship by working VERY hard at MIT!
Your Harvey Mudd is supposed to be nearly equivalent to MIT for undergraduate, but not for graduate studies and research. I doubt that they have as tough a Physical Chemistry course as at MIT back in the day, however. I don’t know how I got a B in that course when so many flunked!
Your comment is spot on. For nearly 40 years, I lived and had a business within walking distance of Vassar College. Most Vassar students that I encountered over the years were (1) really smart but had no common sense and were totally oblivious to anything outside their self-centered and entitled lives; or (2) not the sharpest knife in the drawer but got into Vassar because of DEI, affirmative action, and/or legacy connections.
I knew many professors and deans. Nearly all are ultra liberal -- even those who laughably claimed they were centrists. Most were legends in their own minds. As I used to say to a bar-acquaintance, of mine who was a popular math professor, "Calculus is calculus, and so what makes your class so special." His response, "I'm entertaining." That's a lot of money to pay for entertainment when the subject matter is no different at a college that charges a fraction of the cost of attending Vassar (or any other elite school).
Connections and contacts.
At least at the small, so-called elite liberal arts colleges, the professors actually teach the classes. I went to a large state university and nearly all of the 100, 200, and 300 level classes were taught by graduate students.
With that said, I see no difference whatsoever between STEM classes taught at expensive private colleges and universities and lower cost public colleges and universities. The rules and principles of biology, chemistry, math, and physics are all the same at the undergraduate level.
Northwood University is another good one.
“Almost” none of them are worth it? Name ONE that IS worth it.
I always was under the impression that Harvey Mudd was for those Californians that could not get into MIT, Caltech, Stanford, or Berkeley.
Almost none? I say all are not worth it.
ALMOST?
There isn’t a university on this planet that is worth 100k a year.. Not a degree on God’s green earth that is worthy 400k to acquire.
Not surprisingly the majority in colleges now are women. Not a co-inkee-dink.
Dom DeLuise.
My old Catholic high school in Seattle now costs $25,300 a year.
LOL Mudd was the only other school who awarded that bumper sticker. At that time, it was rated above MIT in undergrad chemistry.. Remember J. Arthur Campbell? How about Bill Sly? That old fart was so tough I don't think I'll ever be so proud of a c-minus.
I got my BA, English at one of the Connecticut state university campuses. I took French from a Romanian polyglot with four other students, took a seminar in William Blake with perhaps six other students taught by a man who almost lived to spread the word about Blake. It needn’t be a private school.
As many liberal arts major i them got an MBA, time at UCONN.
When I attended the UC-Berkeley tuition was $38 per semester. The athletic card cost $55.
When I attended the UC-Berkeley tuition was $38 per semester. The athletic card cost $55.
MIT then had Professor Walter Thorson (PhD CalTech), who later went on to the University of Alberta.
All Chem and Bio majors were required to take Thorson’s Physical Chemistry (Thermodynamics) course (then numbered 5.61). That course was so tough that many received Ds and Fs. The Chemistry ombudsman, Prof Avery Allen Ashdown, had to intervene to fix the situation, or else large numbers of Chem and Bio majors would not graduate. (MIT’s graduate dorm is named for Prof. Ashdown, who was a true gentleman.)
I (a Bio major) received a B—without any intervention from Ashdown. I was VERY surprised, because I only got a C in Differential Equations, which was prerequisite to Physical Chemistry. Chemistry people were very jealous of my B—just as jealous as they had been of my highest As in Organic Chemistry! Perhaps my B was the highest grade in the class—I don’t know.
So that is the story. I highly doubt that anyone at Harvey Mudd was tougher than Thorson—CalTech’s “finest”.
By the way, my PhD thesis advisor at Harvard (in molecular biology) had been a PhD student of Linus Pauling at CalTech. At the end of my own thesis writing, he made me do a formal derivation of a formula for separation of proteins by glycerol gradient centrifugation.
I had to go to the MIT Engineering Library to get data on glycerol density, viscosity, etc., and then use the data to derive the formula. This ended up as a calculus problem, which I solved and successfully derived the formula. I used the formula in one of my published papers.
So CalTech affected me a lot, even though I never went there!
Mudd was analogous in that all students, regardless of major, were required to take PChem as a graduation breadth requirement.
That course was so tough that many received Ds and Fs. The Chemistry ombudsman, Prof Avery Allen Ashdown, had to intervene to fix the situation, or else large numbers of Chem and Bio majors would not graduate.
Mudd had a professor like that (Sedat Serdengecti) for "big systems 101." Seventy percent of the class got a grade of D or lower. The war cry was, "D for DONE!!!" Every top school has a creep like that. I had better teachers in junior college. What makes those schools exceptional is the students.
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