The Most EXPENSIVE Colleges And Universities (PHOTOS)

For a year at one of America's most expensive colleges, you could buy a luxury car. For four years, a house. Granted, each campus on Campusgrotto.com's list of the most expensive schools of 2009-2010 (cost of living included) offers a plethora of dynamic opportunity, stately scenery and, one hopes, a stellar education. But it's up to you to decide: Is the sticker price worth it?

Below is a slideshow of the ten ten priciest institutions.

(Note: The ranking adds the advertised cost of tuition with room and board, and doesn't take into account how much the average student at each school actually pays after financial aid.)

 

Did we miss one? Send us an e-mail with a brief caption and pic!

Find a picture, click the participate button, add a title and upload your picture

1 of 10

Sarah Lawrence College: $54,410

1 of 11

First Slide

Previous Slide

@

Though the college is prestigious and its graduates -- Rahm Emanuel and Tea Leoni among them -- are often successful, students (and their families) must pay as much for a bachelor's degree as one might for a mid-size family home. The school does boast a small student-teacher ratio (9 to 1) and a fairly large number of prominent faculty members, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt III and the poet Tom Lux.

Coolest On Campus Art Installations

The Best Colleges To Work For: 2012 Chronicle Of Higher Education List

Schools On Twitter

Political Sex Scandals

College Football Players Offsides: On Wrong Side Of Law

12 Worst Schools For Free Speech In 2012

Though the college is prestigious and its graduates -- Rahm Emanuel and Tea Leoni among them -- are often successful, students (and their families) must pay as much for a bachelor's degree as one might for a mid-size family home. The school does boast a small student-teacher ratio (9 to 1) and a fairly large number of prominent faculty members, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt III and the poet Tom Lux.

comments(266)

Total comments: 266 | Post a Comment

1 of 11

Rate This Slide

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Worth it! Rip off!

• 
  1
• 
  2
• 
  3
• 
  4
• 
  5
• 
  6
• 
  7
• 
  8
• 
  9
• 
  10

Current Top 5 Slides

loading...

Choose your Top 5 Slides

UserName

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Top User Slides

← Prev|Next →

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Users who voted on this slide

← Prev|Next →

loading...

Comments

[corispelledCORI]

08:53 PM on 04/21/2010

Following another commenter's example: Sarah Lawrence, class of 2008. I was a tour guide and worked for Admissions, so really, ask.

[jcd8822]

11:52 AM on 04/19/2010

I have a lot of respect for John Hopkins.

When it was time to start looking at colleges I was all excited because my aunt and uncle said they wanted to send me to Georgetown University.

When it came time to chose, my mother advised me that I would not be leaving the state of Texas. My bubble burst, but I survived. LOL

[Hare]

04:11 PM on 04/12/2010

Higher education is a racket, I mean a business. Not every student pays the same because as business people know, it all depends on how you approach it and your negotiation skills. Many times it has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. How many of college graduates feel those college classes prepare them for the working world? All people get is a paper saying they are college graduates and then sink or swim at their company. What helps the student is the experience of having interact with others, the friends and connections they made, the networking if the school had children of business owners or valued characters that could give a hand later on.

[supergenius02]

03:21 PM on 04/07/2010

None of the schools on the list are worth the money. Only two would even have a decent argument: Johns Hopkins and only if you are premed and Harvey Mudd whos graduates have one of the highest starting salaries in the country right out of college. Many state schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Texas at Austin and University of North Carolin at Chapel Hill are better than the schools on the above list and only at a fraction of the cost at that. Probably just rich east coast kids going to their parents alma mater.

[veritas88]

01:47 AM on 04/16/2010

Johns Hopkins was worth it. I was a pre-med English major. I would think Georgetown would be worth it too.

[butter27]

11:31 AM on 04/05/2010

All this talk about Eurpean universities....Has anyone mentioned Canada yet!?!?! I'm Canadian and I also have a graduate degree from NYU. I paid just over $3,500 per year for tuition at a great university in Canada for my undergrad (not really, as I had full funding through scholarships), and then less than $9,000 for my graduate degree at another amazing Canadian university, which was also fully funded by scholarships. By the way, I am quite average. Not a brainiac, not an athlete, NOT rich at all. Blue-collar middle-class.

Had to take out my first student loan for NYU, after 6 yrs of fully-funded and amazing education in Canada. While I had a pretty great time, a lot of my professors at NYU were "brand name" (well-known writers), and didnt care about teaching or sucked at it. I learned a heck of a lot more and met far more amazing teachers in Canada.

After 2 masters degrees, I manage a bar for 34,000 per year. Yikes! With $20,000 in student loans, purely from my 2 yrs at NYU (and I lived one year for free as an RA!). Wish me luck making that NYU investment pay off. And don't forget Canada, people! Look into it, we are well-renowned for our education system.

[Barbie and Ken forever]

02:14 AM on 04/05/2010

Damn, I thought schools like Yale would be at the top of the list

[veritas88]

01:44 AM on 04/16/2010

the location of the school is what contributes to the cost of tuition (Sarah Lawrence in the lush suburbs, NYU in expensive NYC, GW in the posh area of DC). Yale is in New Haven, CT.....which is a pretty grimy, urban city. It's definitely not NYC.

[NYC-CatLover]

09:39 PM on 04/03/2010

Rip-off-U. I'm currently attending nursing school, it's a two-year program run by a hospital but affiliated with my local community college. The entire cost for the two-year program is about $23K, and when you graduate you take the NCLEX and get your RN license. Something tells me I'll have a much more relevent skill set and be far more likely to get a job when I graduate than the liberal arts major from Sarah Lawrence or Skidmore. I actually knew a few high school classmates to went to Skidmore, majored in theater or something and ended up doing dinner theater down in Florida. Not exactly worth that $50k/year huh?

[jcd8822]

11:44 AM on 04/19/2010

You are very wise and should do quite well. I wish you the best in your chosen field, which I rate up there with guardian angels.

[BlueZoo]

07:12 PM on 04/02/2010

Considering the earlier story re New Yorkers willing to pay $38K+ to send their children to kindegarten, these prices are reasonable by comparison!

[bluechao]

05:21 PM on 03/30/2010

Nice to see my alma mater is still #1 on the list. It was #2 when I went there (Bennington was #1 then but has gone through rough times since, and can't charge what it once did relative to others).

Despite going to such an expensive school, my parents didn't have to pay full tuition. We paid a good chunk of it, but my mother worked full time at Johns Hopkins, so they paid the equivalent of 1/2 of their tuition to SLC for me to go there. This is a common practice and benefit offered by schools for their full-time employees.

As for my education at Sarah Lawrence? First rate, it can hardly be beat anywhere. Some well known academics and some stars in their fields, even. The number of highly successful people that have come from that tiny school of 1200 students, especially in the arts, is simply amazing. I, for instance, studied with a fellow student who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize, David Lindsay-Abaire, and he's he 6th Pulitzer Prize winner to either study or teach there. J.J. Abrams, Brian DePalma, Juliana Margulies, Barbara Walters, Vera Wang...the list is huge for such a tiny place and I do believe a lot has to do with the instruction one receives there.

[vet-of4renwarz]

03:59 PM on 04/08/2010

...and/or network...

[Crumbysmom]

03:09 PM on 03/30/2010

Went to grad school at NYU. My debt would make you laugh. Then cry. Then laugh. Then cry some more. Or maybe it just does that to me. I choose the wrong career path if I was interested in ever paying the loan back.

I am actually currently working on winning the Powerball Lotto to help get the loan down. But it might not cover all of it after all the interest is added on. Wish me luck.

[Barbie and Ken forever]

02:14 AM on 04/05/2010

Good luck!!!!!

[45Caliber]

02:24 PM on 03/30/2010

My Niece graduated from NYU Stern School of Business in '08 Although she was on a partial scholarship, she was a RA for 3 of her 4 years to help with tuition and the remainder of her $45 thousand her parents paid for her to go. MY son attended Franklin Pierce approximately ($32,000) and He left college with more debt than one can imagine,His only save and grace was that he enlisted in the US NAVY and Uncle Sam paid off all of his Federal Loans before he deployed that was a Blessing . It is amazing at the prices for obtaining an education and this something that should not be costly. When I was in college in the 80's and I attended a State University my student loans were $107.00 a month and I had the nerve to complain...LOL.

It's a shame the cost of a good education there needs to be a cap on them at some point, or it will go back to the days where only the elite will be allowed to attend college and get the education that whether you are poor or rich deserve to have.

[3in1]

01:46 PM on 03/30/2010

SLC.edu / Giving to SLC / Foundations/Corporations / Foundation Donors

A List of Our Foundation Donors

Sarah Lawrence Difference Campaign, 1999-2004*

Anonymous (3)
The George I. Alden Trust
Booth Ferris Foundation
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation
Mary Livingston Griggs & Mary Griggs Burke Foundation
Council of Graduate Schools
Dance/USA
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
The Max & Victoria Dreyfus Foundation
Horncrest Foundation, Inc.
Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation
The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation
Leon Lowenstein Foundation, Inc.
The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Pfizer, Inc.
The Porrath Foundation for Patient Advocacy
The Presser Foundation
The Ida and William Rosenthal Foundation, Inc.
Sherman Fairchild Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation
Marilyn M. Simpson Charitable Trusts
*List not fully comprehensive

[gschenck]

01:40 PM on 03/30/2010

Ask any college professor how many hours they would have tought thirty years ago and how many they teach now. When professors work 1/3 of the hours they used to the costs go up.

[palindrom]

10:53 AM on 04/03/2010

That's just not true. I've been a college professor for 30 years and I'm teaching the same amount as ever. The change is in the enormous number of supporting characters keeping the institution running, most of whom are not engaged with students directly -- and there are many causes for this, such as ensuring compliance with well-meaning but odious federal regulations, supporting the IT infrastructure needed for a modern institution, and so on.

In fact, in many schools (though mostly not in these expensive ones) the regular faculty is being increasingly supplanted by low-wage, low-status visiting instructors. Faculty salaries simply are not the driving force behind the increase in tuition.

[fusionfan]

01:27 PM on 03/30/2010

There are a number of top-rated state universities from which to choose. You can send you kids to the best state university where you live, or often there are reciprocal tuition agreements with state schools from neighboring states.

This will leave additional money to support graduate work or professional school, and less debt for your children. Even if you have the money to send your kid to a private school, send your child to a state school and put the money you save into a savings account for your child, so that they will be able to start life with 60-100 K in the bank rather than 60-100K in debt.

Also, at the State Universities, I think your children will meet a broader, less elitist, less driven, and less spoiled group of classmates. Some (obviously not all) of these rich kids are morally decrepit, into substance abuse, and with an exaggerated sense of self-worth and little concern for helping the less fortunate.

[laucarlson]

01:24 PM on 03/30/2010

The high price tag is so that elites mingle with elites, not so anyone gets a job or so the unwashed masses have access. It's not about knowledge or learning, it's about forming alliances and marriages between children of a privileged group. It's the high cost of a particular peer group.

[BS1989]

02:44 PM on 04/21/2010

Oh, please. You've got to be kidding. Do you live in the 21st century or are you one of the unwashed masses.