Monday, September 14, 2020

the 50k question

My wife noticed an ad in a local (secular) newspaper for a private academy type school in the area that was still taking in students for this year and she wondered if this was due to parents not being willing to spend top dollar for virtual classes.  No way to know if that theory is correct, but I was curious as to what exactly an exclusive academy school charges in tuition and how it compared to local yeshivos.  I found the amount clearly posted on their website.  It is high, but not completely out of the ballpark range of what some NY yeshivos charge.

A scary prediction: I think odds are good that within the next decade we will see yeshiva tuition cross the 50k mark.

Not everywhere, of course.  But some place will do it.  I was easily able to do a search and find a yeshiva in NY already charging above 40k for high school tuition, so what's a few thousand more?  And once one school raises the bar to that level, the bar will go up everywhere else as well, to some greater or less degree.

Maybe it's the scale of my own earnings that's the problem, but to me at least it seems that you have to be pulling in quite a lot of $$$ to be able to afford tuition rates like that for even two kids.  And needless to say, kids who attend a school like that are going to go to a summer camp program that costs another 8k+ per kid, if not more.  How many people have 100k+ in disposable after tax income to spend on educating just two kids? 

How is this a sustainable system?  How does someone look at those numbers and not throw up their hands and say no way can I afford to send my kid to yeshiva?   

Just another massive problem making life in galus increasingly untenable.

2 comments:

  1. "no way can I afford to send my kid to yeshiva"

    just put skylights in all the study halls, so middle-income kids from the wrong side of the tracks can climb up like Hillel and listen in, rain snow or shine...

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  2. Someone famously wrote an article about this a couple years ago and was castigated for it and made to look like he had his priorities out of whack since he wasn't able to be moser nefesh for his kid's chinuch.

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