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Private school tuition is the same as healthcare in the US. Everything has an enormous sticker price for anyone who asks, but no one is expected to actually pa

Private school tuition is the same as healthcare in the US. Everything has an enormous sticker price for anyone who asks, but no one is expected to actually pay that amount. And if you do pay that amount, it's just because you're a sucker who didn't get in on the fact that it's just a made up number. Rich kids may pay that amount, but it probably gets flipped around into some tax-advantaged "donation" that also helps people feel good about themselves. Poor people get "scholarships", which are really just the university cutting the sticker price down to what they actually need from the person, with some creative shuffling of funds to make it look like they are paying "sticker price". Healthcare works exactly the same. The key is to have enough layers of bureaucracy that no one can quite figure it all out.

shsjxjbsbs 7y ago
I don’t believe it’s true that rich people are getting to write off college costs as a donation. They might be paying them out of a tax advantaged 529 account. The magnitude of this advantage is such that middle-class people probably care the most about it.
- war1025 7y ago
  there are very few people who don't consider themselves middle-class, so that's not really a useful category I'd think.
trophycase 7y ago
Case in point, my original tuition value of ~16k/year was reduced so much by scholarships that I was actually making money going to school. This is an unusual case, but it wasn't unusual for other people at this school to be getting thousands in scholarships per year.
lonelappde 7y ago
It's not exactly the same. Tuition had a standard process for showing the school your financials so they can set a price. It sounds like open-ended pickpocketing but it's a competitive market with a clear coordinated timeline for the offer process, so you can choose the school with the best price for offering.

shsjxjbsbs 7y ago

I don’t believe it’s true that rich people are getting to write off college costs as a donation. They might be paying them out of a tax advantaged 529 account. The magnitude of this advantage is such that middle-class people probably care the most about it.

war1025 7y ago
there are very few people who don't consider themselves middle-class, so that's not really a useful category I'd think.

trophycase 7y ago

Case in point, my original tuition value of ~16k/year was reduced so much by scholarships that I was actually making money going to school. This is an unusual case, but it wasn't unusual for other people at this school to be getting thousands in scholarships per year.

lonelappde 7y ago

It's not exactly the same. Tuition had a standard process for showing the school your financials so they can set a price. It sounds like open-ended pickpocketing but it's a competitive market with a clear coordinated timeline for the offer process, so you can choose the school with the best price for offering.