What Your Kid's College Tuition Costs Pay For

By Dawn Handschuh, Personal Financial Writer   

With most purchases, it's pretty easy to see what you're getting for your money. Plunk down $50 at the grocery store checkout line, and you can see you're getting exactly one whole chicken, a pound of ground beef, milk, eggs, a few canned items, and that's about it.

In this economy, it's essential to understand what your money's buying you. Do you know any recent college-bound high school graduates? Did they whoop for joy when they were accepted at their top-pick school? Chances are, they and their parents probably spent more time considering whether they should pay an extra $35 a month to upgrade their cell phone plan than their $100,000+ college tuition bill.

College tuition costs have climbed steeply during the past 25 years — an incredible 439%. That's far more than the rise in energy costs or healthcare during the same period.¹

College tuition costs aren't always transparent, and you're not apt to receive an itemized list of expenses when your prodigy enrolls.

How, then, do you know if you're getting a good value for your money, particularly when you may be repaying student loans for years after your child graduates? Do the higher costs associated with an Ivy League school, for example, really equate to a better education, or can your child do equally well at a state university?

Of course, if the cachet of a prestigious university on your kid's resume means everything to you, none of this really matters. For most of us, though, careful comparisons of the finalists on your daughter's wish list could save you thousands of dollars in financing.

Dartmouth College recently hiked its 2009-2010 tuition to $38,445.² Add in room, board and mandatory fees, and your son or daughter can expect to pay a total of $49,974 for just the first year of his or her undergraduate education.

In addition to Dartmouth, an Ivy League school, New Hampshire is also home to a number of state universities, including Keene State College. For in-state residents, tuition, room and board at Keene State College would total $16,574 in 2008-2009; it's $24,424 for out-of-state students.³

Assuming that expenses remained the same all four years of your child's education (for purposes of illustration only), the difference in cost between a Dartmouth College bachelor's degree and a Keene State College bachelor's degree would be $133,600.

Let's take a look at what might account for the huge disparity in cost.

Courses of study

Dartmouth offers 56 standard majors ranging from Arabic, Astronomy and Earth Sciences to Film, Linguistics and Neuroscience. Keene offers 40 fields of study for bachelors' degrees in many of the same subjects as well as Journalism, Architecture and Geology.

The student body

The two schools have similar-sized student populations. There were 5,848 students enrolled in Dartmouth's undergraduate and graduate schools in 2008, while there were 5,538 students enrolled at Keene, including part-time and graduate students.

Faculty

According to its website, Dartmouth has more than 350 tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the undergraduate college. More than 90% of the faculty hold doctorate or equivalent degrees. The undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 8:1.

At Keene, there are 185 full-time faculty members and 240 part-time faculty. The college website features profiles of individual faculty members, but no summary of their qualifications as a group. The student-to-faculty ratio is 17:1.

Libraries

Dartmouth students can access more than 35,000 digital resources, 20,000 print and digital journal titles, 2.7 million books, 12,000 videos, 190,000 maps, 35,000 sound recordings and 450,000 photographs.

Keene State's Wallace E. Mason Library houses roughly 300,000 books and has active subscriptions to more than 1,200 periodicals, newspapers, and annual publications.

Campus amenities

Dartmouth offers:

• Its own alpine ski area 15 minutes from campus
• Groomed trails, rentals and lessons at the Dartmouth Cross Country Ski Center
• Its own equestrian center
• A semi-private, 18-hole golf course just north of campus
• A student-run organic farm that provides sustainable food energy system models
• A working forest and recreation area offering various programs
• Thirteen on-campus dining halls offering vegetarian, kosher and halal menus as well as traditional fare
• Eight professionally-directed student music and dance ensembles and more than 100 live student musical and theatrical performances each year

Keene State offers:

• Full use of its fitness center, recreational courts, swimming pool, racquetball court, aerobic/fitness classes, and an indoor jogging/walking track
• An arboretum and gardens
• The Redfern Arts Center, which contains four theatres, eight art studios, a dance studio, band and choral rehearsal rooms, 20 practice modules, scenery and costume shops, and the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, which exhibits year-round for students and the public; exhibits include students' works as well as exhibits of national and international quality
• The Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies, which serves as a leading resource in Holocaust education
• The Child Development Center, a "best practices" demonstration early-childhood education center
• A Community Research Center that offers students an opportunity for hands-on volunteer experiences that benefit area nonprofit groups

Generous touches at elite schools aren't limited to New Hampshire. At Boston's Babson College, a free computer with Internet access is included with each student room.⁴

Business Week described Princeton University's new student residence as "a billionaire's mansion in the form of a dorm." The $136 million facility features student rooms with triple-glazed mahogany casement windows made of leaded glass and a dining hall with 35-foot ceilings gabled in oak.

"…[t]he increasingly plush Ivy Plus model casts into sharp relief the travails of America's public institutions of higher learning, which educate 75% of the country's college students. While the Ivies, which account for less than 1% of the total, lift their spending into the stratosphere, many public colleges and universities are struggling to cope with rising enrollments in an era when most states are devoting a dwindling share of their budgets to higher ed," Business Week reported.⁵

Does a higher price tag always indicate a better education? Is there a point at which parents decide that rising tuition costs just aren't worth it? Arguably, many of the factors contributing to steep college costs ⎯ including cultural and recreational amenities, luxurious dorms and state-of-the-art athletic facilities ⎯ have nothing to do with providing a better education for students and more to do with pampering students when they're not studying.

Your son or daughter may spend years paying off their student loans, and jobs with respectable salaries are by no means guaranteed, particularly in today's economy. Amid the excitement generated by eagerly-awaited college acceptance letters, don't forget to take a hard look at the numbers.

Footnotes

¹ "Is College Still Worth the Price?" CNN Money, August 22, 2008 

² "Dartmouth Announces 4.8% Tuition Increase for 2009-2010 While Budgeting 13% Increase in Financial Aid," Dartmouth News, February 9, 2009

³ Keene State College 

⁴ "Soak Away Essay Worries in the Hot Tub," The Times Higher Education, January 17, 2003

⁵ "The Dangerous Wealth of the Ivy League," Business Week, November 29, 2007