TNR: 'Don't Send Your Kids to the Ivy League'

I can't remember where I saw the piece - probably the NYT - but I read something a few weeks ago about how a lot of colleges have a huge sticker price, strangely enough, largely as a signal that it's a good school. People just assume that if it costs $50,000 a year, officially, then it must be prestigious. Even though no one actually pays that much.

It's a weird market phenomenon. I think it's called the Johnnie Walker Effect, after the scotch whiskey brand sold more whiskey by raising the price of a bottle, totally opposite of what we expect from the traditional law of supply and demand.

 

Elmhurst College costs $43,000 a year! I would have never guessed that.

 

I thought it was a JUCO!

 

That's all-inclusive -- books, tuition, room and board. That's a fairly common sticker price. Augustana is $47,000.

Also, no one is paying that price. It's like shopping at Kohl's. Everything is always marked 50 percent off, but you can't imagine who in their right mind actually paid the full sticker price for that pair of khaki pants.

Dick, Elmhurst is a United Church of Christ-affiliated college (it's also where for years Michael Jordan had a basketball camp). Part of the discount for the girl I know comes because she's a UCC member.

 

That's kind of what I figured, bit that sounds like it would be very stressful for parents and kids.

It makes choosing a college sound like buying a car.

And, isn't that part of the appeal of foreign students from Asia and the Middle East -- they pay full rate?

 

Yes, it is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/education/international-students-pay-top-dollar-at-us-colleges.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The schools are very clear -- they need these students to make up for state cuts in funding, and to continue to offer need-based grants to others. The flip side is that the state schools become much harder for in-state students to attend, and that causes its own upset. I know that with the University of Illinois, already difficult to get into if you're from the state (unless you want to major in agriculture), you hear a lot of parents grumble because of all the spots taken by international students. Illinois' enrollment (undergrad and grad) has held steady at about 44,000, but the number of international students has nearly doubled in 10 years, up to nearly 9,000 in the Spring 2014 semester.

http://www.isss.illinois.edu/download_forms/stats/sp14_stats.pdf

 

At one university in the U.S., foreign kids didn't even need to speak English. Just have the parents pay full-price for a year to study at the campus (2-3 years of study beforehand with a partner foreign university) and they'd get a U.S. degree.

 

One of my favorite Urban Dictionary entries was one for the University of Chicago:

"A school that nobody in Chicago has heard of, but everyone in Korea has."

That's about right.

 

My niece was not interested in visiting the University of Chicago when she came out to look at schools, including Northwestern and Notre Dame, with her dad.

The word was it was "where fun goes to die".

 

Re: international students. I found an annual population survey for their overall representation. Last numbers available -- 4 percent of the college population, a record 820,000, up 7 percent over one year. Half are from China, India or South Korea. Ten states have 61 percent of the population, half of them Big Ten states, which makes sense because nine out of the most popular 25 institutions for international students are Big Ten schools.

http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/International-Students/Infographic
http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/International-Students/Leading-Institutions/2012-13