I wanted to take a moment to respond to several readers who e-mailed us about a front page story in today’s paper which said GW was no longer the most expensive school in the country. One reader pointed to a recent CNN article, which said GW still has the highest tuition.
CNN is ranking purely tuition, whereas our story was based on tuition and required costs (like room and board). In 2007, GW made national news as the first school to pass $50,000 in required costs, which are important given that room and board often amount to about $10,000. Today’s article was about how Sarah Lawrence is now leading that pack, according to a consulting firm that compares these figures.
To base a ranking solely on tuition is misleading, because students are actually paying a great deal more. So while the CNN article is factual, our coverage of this issue has concentrated on the entire price since you cannot enroll at GW – or Sarah Lawrence for that matter – without paying $10,000 for housing and food.
When it’s all said and done, you easily pay over $55,000 a year. And that’s if you buy a lot of spaghetti and watch your budget. I don’t know whether Sarah Lawrence has a meal plan, but it’s not hard to imagine that it’s more adequate than our non-existent one. They may have a higher tuition officially, but nothing’s as expensive as GW.
The greater issue, I suggest, is not who has the highest tuition, but rather what value is the customer/student getting for all this money. So NYU, Georgetown and Johh Hopkins are higher or close in costs. They also rank consistently higher in US and international university rankings. So if GWU wants to continue charging “Ivy League”-type rates (not negating the impact of location as a cost factor), then it should focus on delivering “Ivy league”-type programs.