A Public University Joins the Expanding $50K Club of College Prices

The ranks of the most expensive colleges have grown again: 100 institutions are charging $50,000 or more for tuition, fees, room, and board in 2010-11, according to a Chronicle analysis of data released last week by the College Board. That’s well above the 58 universities and colleges that charged that much in 2009-10, and a major jump from the year before, when only five colleges were priced over $50,000.

This year marks a milestone as the first public institution has joined that elite club: the University of California at Berkeley is charging out-of-state residents $50,649 for tuition, fees, room, and board. (The price for in-state residents is only $27,770.)

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All of the other 99 colleges charging $50,000 or more are private. They made up 9 percent of the 1,058 private institutions reporting any amount for tuition, fees, room, and board.

Searchable Database: Tuition and Fees, 2010-11

Federal Spending on Student Aid Jumps as College Prices Go Up Again

To be sure, many students at the most-expensive institutions are paying significantly less than the sticker price, thanks to financial aid. Net prices, including financial aid, are not available by institution for 2010-11. But the College Board estimates that the average net price for tuition, fees, room, and board at private, four-year colleges has fallen slightly from the level five years ago, when adjusted for inflation, to $21,020 this year.

Still, some students pay the full, published prices. And college officials and analysts have worried (see last year’s $50K club article) that if list prices continue to rise, they may drive away applicants and draw pressure from policy makers. A sticker price of $50,000 is more than twice the annual income for a family of four living at the poverty line, $22,050.

But other observers forecast little decline in the number of students eager to attend elite institutions charging big sticker prices.

Berkeley’s charges topping $50,000 represent an outlier among the nearly 600 four-year public institutions for which the College Board reported out-of-state charges for tuition, fees, room, and board in 2010-11. The median such charge in that group was $23,526.

Only 14 public institutions besides Berkeley set those charges at $40,000 or higher in 2010-11. Of them, eight are other campuses in the University of California system. The other six institutions are the College of William & Mary and the Universities of Colorado at Boulder, Michigan at Ann Arbor, Texas at Austin, Vermont, and Virginia. [Editor’s Note: The last two paragraphs were added to this article on November 2, 2010, after its original publication.]

Institutions charging $50,000 or more:

Institution	2010-11	2009-10	1-year increase
	Tuition, fees, room, and board ($)
Sarah Lawrence College	57,384	55,788	2.9%
Landmark College	56,500	53,900	4.8%
Columbia U. School of General Studies	54,782	51,930	5.5%
Wesleyan U.	53,976	51,432	4.9%
Columbia U.	53,874	51,544	4.5%
Johns Hopkins U.	53,690	51,690	3.9%
Georgetown U.	53,591	52,161	2.7%
New York U.	53,589	51,993	3.1%
Harvey Mudd College	53,588	51,137	4.8%
Barnard College	53,496	50,969	5.0%
Bard College	53,480	51,180	4.5%
Trinity College (Conn.)	53,330	51,400	3.8%
Washington U. in St. Louis	53,315	51,193	4.1%
Bates College	53,300	51,300	3.9%
U. of Chicago	53,244	51,078	4.2%
Claremont McKenna College	53,230	51,035	4.3%
Connecticut College	53,110	51,115	3.9%
Fordham U.	53,093	50,598	4.9%
Vassar College	53,090	51,470	3.1%
Pitzer College	53,080	50,770	4.5%
George Washington U.	53,025	51,775	2.4%
Vanderbilt U.	53,000	51,228	3.5%
Haverford College	52,970	50,975	3.9%
Stevens Institute of Technology	52,965	50,750	4.4%
Babson College	52,916	50,324	5.2%
Bennington College	52,900	50,860	4.0%
Scripps College	52,900	50,550	4.6%
Bowdoin College	52,880	50,900	3.9%
New School Parsons School of Design	52,870	51,270	3.1%
Tufts U.	52,866	51,088	3.5%
Occidental College	52,815	49,702	6.3%
U. of Southern California	52,752	50,732	4.0%
Carnegie Mellon U.	52,690	51,068	3.2%
Boston College	52,624	50,970	3.2%
Bard College at Simon’s Rock	52,610	50,340	4.5%
Oberlin College	52,587	50,484	4.2%
Middlebury College	52,500	50,780	3.4%
Northwestern U.	52,463	50,164	4.6%
Dartmouth College	52,445	50,084	4.7%
Eastman School of Music of U. of Rochester	52,372	50,326	4.1%
Williams College	52,340	49,880	4.9%
Union College (N.Y.)	52,329	50,439	3.7%
Cornell U.	52,316	50,114	4.4%
Bucknell U.	52,280	50,320	3.9%
Hampshire College	52,202	50,450	3.5%
St. John’s College (Md.)	52,176	50,352	3.6%
St. John’s College (N.M.)	52,176	49,992	4.4%
Skidmore College	52,170	51,196	1.9%
Hobart and William Smith Colleges	52,168	50,245	3.8%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	52,145	50,310	3.6%
Boston U.	52,124	50,288	3.7%
Carleton College	52,110	50,205	3.8%
Franklin & Marshall College	52,110	50,410	3.4%
Colgate U.	52,060	50,940	2.2%
Mount Holyoke College	52,036	50,576	2.9%
Colby College	51,990	50,320	3.3%
Boston Conservatory	51,985	49,856	4.3%
Dickinson College	51,975	50,219	3.5%
Wellesley College	51,950	49,848	4.2%
U. of Pennsylvania	51,944	49,986	3.9%
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering	51,925	50,025	3.8%
U. of Rochester	51,922	49,890	4.1%
Smith College	51,898	50,380	3.0%
Duke U.	51,865	49,895	3.9%
Reed College	51,850	49,950	3.8%
Bryn Mawr College	51,780	50,034	3.5%
Lafayette College	51,774	50,289	3.0%
St. Lawrence U.	51,770	49,925	3.7%
Hamilton College (N.Y.)	51,760	49,860	3.8%
Tulane U.	51,708	50,190	3.0%
Amherst College	51,520	49,078	5.0%
Swarthmore College	51,500	49,600	3.8%
Brandeis U.	51,488	49,562	3.9%
Chapman U.	51,481	49,596	3.8%
Fairfield U.	51,430	49,410	4.1%
Gettysburg College	51,390	48,460	6.0%
Brown U.	51,360	49,128	4.5%
Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts	51,350	49,810	3.1%
Berklee College of Music	51,335	48,733	5.3%
Pomona College	51,330	49,668	3.3%
Wheaton College (Mass.)	51,264	49,440	3.7%
Providence College	51,125	44,480	14.9%
Wake Forest U.	50,980	49,032	4.0%
College of the Holy Cross	50,832	49,342	3.0%
U. of Notre Dame	50,785	48,845	4.0%
Harvard College	50,724	48,684	4.2%
U. of California at Berkeley (out-of-state residents)	50,649	47,726	6.1%
Drew U.	50,647	48,385	4.7%
Washington and Lee U.	50,630	48,702	4.0%
Stanford U.	50,576	48,843	3.5%
Villanova U.	50,550	49,330	2.5%
Pepperdine U.	50,470	48,750	3.5%
West Coast U.	50,453	n/a	n/a
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	50,446	49,142	2.7%
U. of Richmond	50,420	48,490	4.0%
Kenyon College	50,400	48,240	4.5%
New School Mannes College of Music	50,360	48,860	3.1%
Emory U.	50,356	48,932	2.9%
Loyola Marymount U.	50,334	48,679	3.4%
Lehigh U.	50,300	48,830	3.0%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute	50,240	48,868	2.8%
American U.	50,165	47,903	4.7%
Cleveland Institute of Music	50,005	47,157	6.0%
Loyola U. Maryland	50,000	47,810	4.6%
Note: The designation “n/a” means data were not available. Students incur additional costs not included in these figures, such as books and transportation. This list includes units of institutions that are also shown on the list. In the accompanying news article, The Chronicle did not include the units in tallies of the number of institutions charging $50,000 or more.
Source: The College Board collected the figures for 2010-11 in its “Annual Survey of Colleges 2010.” © 2010, the College Board. This material may not be copied, published, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.