It’s higher-priced education.
Several elite New England universities will cost students a jaw-dropping $90,000 a year beginning this fall — with more schools expected to follow suit, according to a report.
Boston University, Tufts, Wellesley, and Yale — among the top private colleges in the country — will begin charging the nearly six-figure sum a year for tuition, housing and other expenses, according to the schools’ admissions websites, The Boston Globe reported.
Just six years ago, families were in an uproar when the annual price at schools like BU, Tufts, Harvard and Amherst college all topped $70,000 — and costs have continued to skyrocket.
“There’s always a huge psychological impact to these thresholds,” Sandy Baum, senior fellow in the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute, told The Globe. “I remember when it went above $50,000, and people were just in shock.”
A number of other Boston-area colleges have yet to update their already steep tuition and fees for the 2024-2025 academic year, but are also expected to raise their prices for the fall semester, according to the paper.
At Boston University, the price tag includes $66,670 in tuition, $19,020 for housing and food and the cost of books and other fees for a whopping total of $90,207 for the 2024-2025 academic year.
That represents a 42% jump from 10 years ago where the total cost was $63,644, The Globe reported.
Cost of attendance at Tufts in Medford will be $91,888, according to estimates on the school’s website. Yale University in New Haven, Conn. will cost $90,975 next year.
Other schools nearing the eye-popping $90,0000 threshold for the 2024-2025 school year include Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. which costs $89,824; Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. at $88,210; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology at $85,960.
For the 2023-2024 academic year, Harvard charged $79,540 — which reportedly jumped to roughly $87,450 when expenses such as books were factored in. At Boston College, the all-in cost was $89,955 and Northeastern University was $86,821.
Fortunately, most students won’t be paying the full listing price thanks to financial aid and scholarships.
BU, for instance, will dish out $425 million in financial aid for the next academic year, school spokesperson Colin Riley told The Globe.
That need-based aid is “guaranteed for four years with BU Scholarship Assurance,” he said.
About 56% of BU’s students receive financial aid in some form, with the average aid package amounting to around $67,000, Riley said.
“Because this is an average, some of the neediest students paid $0, and others paid more,” he told the paper.
