Sixteen colleges now charge over $100,000 per year. The Princeton Review released this data. Nobody asked them to.
The report says most students pay less than the sticker price. This is like a car dealership bragging that nobody actually pays MSRP. Congratulations on inventing a fake number and then heroically discounting it.
Parents will see six figures and panic. They'll refinance the house. They'll cash out retirement accounts. Their kid will major in communications and learn to make TikToks about mental health awareness. The ROI on that investment should hit breakeven around 2087.
The colleges defend this by saying financial aid exists. Translation: we invented a price nobody can afford so we could play God deciding who gets to attend. It's a brilliant strategy. Charge $100,000 for a philosophy degree, then act like you're doing charity work when you only take $75,000.
The students who do pay full price are subsidizing everyone else. Their parents are too rich for aid but not rich enough to notice $400,000 disappearing. These kids will graduate and become the same middle managers who approved New Coke and the Metaverse.
Here's what you get for $100,000 a year: a roommate who doesn't shower, dining hall food that violates the Geneva Convention, and a lecture hall where a tenured professor reads PowerPoint slides he made in 2003. The slides still reference MySpace.
But the real scam is telling eighteen-year-olds that this matters. That the right school opens doors. That prestige equals success. Then they graduate $200,000 in debt with a degree in sociology and discover the only door that opened leads to a shared apartment with four strangers and a bathroom that's never been properly cleaned.
The Princeton Review will release this data again next year. The number will be higher. Parents will panic harder. Nothing will change. Turns out the best investment in education is teaching your kid to ignore headlines about education costs and learn a trade instead.
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