Wake Forest Tuition Trends

Thanks Hatch. Adios.

"The total costs of attendance including tuition, fees, books & supplies costs, and living costs have increased 37.42% from the year 2011 ($56,236) where the current year costs are $77,278 at Wake Forest University. The undergraduate tuition & fees has raised from $41,576 (2011) to $57,760 (2021). The graduate school tuition & fees has raised from $32,534 (year 2011) to $39,216 (year 2021)."


https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/wake-forest-university/cost-of-attendance/

How does that increase compare to our peer schools?

That's about 3.5% per year. I had 10% hikes every year, so the "Thanks Hatch" sentiment seems warranted.

Tuition hikes predate Hatch.

Tuition for the class of 2006 went up 22% in 4 years. There was an average jump of 6.9% per year.

DeaconCav06 said:

Tuition hikes predate Hatch.

There was an average jump of 6.9% per year.

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nice

DeaconCav06 said:

Tuition hikes predate Hatch.

Tuition for the class of 2006 went up 22% in 4 years. There was an average jump of 6.9% per year.

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During the TK years I remember hearing 7% per year as a threshhold when complaints would start coming in, so that tracks.

BeachBumDeac said:

How does that increase compare to our peer schools?

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who do we consider our peer schools?

last I checked, a year or two ago, WF was more expensive for total cost of attendance than Harvard, Stanford, and MIT; I appreciate WF, but don't consider those to be peer schools

also last I checked, running WF's cost of attendance tool, a family earning $150k with $500k in savings was expected to pay the full $75k+ cost of attendance.

Question: when did WF start mandating 3 years on campus? that is a sneaky add to cost of attendance

thatguy2016 said:

who do we consider our peer schools?

last I checked, a year or two ago, WF was more expensive for total cost of attendance than Harvard, Stanford, and MIT; I appreciate WF, but don't consider those to be peer schools

also last I checked, running WF's cost of attendance tool, a family earning $150k with $500k in savings was expected to pay the full $75k+ cost of attendance.

Question: when did WF start mandating 3 years on campus? that is a sneaky add to cost of attendance

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Those cost of attendance numbers are skewed because the 3 schools you mentioned all have massive endowments generated from rich alumni that help pay for scholarships and other expenses.

Why would you compare wake to MIT?

Other than size of undergraduate student body (which is hardly ever a comparison wake uses to determine our peers), its mission, students, faculty, reputation, campus, etc. are as unlike wake as possible.

would you feel better if I excluded MIT from my post?

I am comparing the cost of (in my opinion) the three best-known/most selective universities in the U.S. to WF; WF has chosen to price itself above those three (or two, if you prefer)

so who does WF consider to be its peers?

When I think of our peer schools, here's my list (going down the USNW rankings):

Penn
Northwestern
duke
Dartmouth
Brown
Vanderbilt
Rice
Wash U
Notre Dame
Emory
Georgetown
USC
Carnegie Mellon
UVA
Carolina

That's up to about 30. All smallish private schools or publics that purport to operate on a liberal arts model.

We can compare ourselves to big research universities if we want but that's not really our niche (just like we shouldn't compare ourselves to schools on the SLAC list)

Excluding the two state schools for obvious reasons, only Vanderbilt, Rice, and Emory have lower listed tuitions, and not by much.

And from that list only Rice and Dartmouth enroll fewer undergraduates

so, all of those private schools are ranked ahead of WF, and WF is more expensive than a few of them

thatguy2016 said:

so, all of those private schools are ranked ahead of WF, and WF is more expensive than a few of them

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Yes, by a few thousand dollars a year. Not much difference.

What's your point?

There are also some schools ranked behind wake I'd probably consider peers too, some cheaper and some more expensive.

Also, I just looked at your two initial examples:

Stanford is listed at $56,169
Harvard is listed at $54,002
Wake is listed at $57,760

Not a lot of difference there. And Harvard's recruitment is different from just about anywhere else. They make a poor comparison with any school on any metric

If you think wake is too expensive, you're right because all schools are too expensive

If you think wake is too expensive for its reputation then that is an opinion based on your understanding of our relative reputation (which I've already disagreed with above).

Clearly wake thinks at that cost it can continue to enroll the best students who can pay and subsidize the best students who can not.

A lot of us here, myself included, are bummed because rising prices mean we won't be able to give our kids the same wake experience we had. But what it really means is you won't be able to send them to a top private school anywhere. I'd be astonished to learn that the $1500 difference between wake and Stanford -- or between any of wake's peer schools, for that matter -- is making anybody's decision for them.

thatguy2016 said:

who do we consider our peer schools?

last I checked, a year or two ago, WF was more expensive for total cost of attendance than Harvard, Stanford, and MIT; I appreciate WF, but don't consider those to be peer schools

also last I checked, running WF's cost of attendance tool, a family earning $150k with $500k in savings was expected to pay the full $75k+ cost of attendance.

Question: when did WF start mandating 3 years on campus? that is a sneaky add to cost of attendance

Click to expand...

For that family earning $150k (or whatever), calculate the amount of money saved by sending the kid (or multiple kids) to a state school, invested for 25 years at at 7% (or whatever rate you want to use), and see what their retirement savings could be. That's one way to look at the opportunity cost of going to WFU.

DeaconCav06 said:

Tuition hikes predate Hatch.

Tuition for the class of 2006 went up 22% in 4 years. There was an average jump of 6.9% per year.

Click to expand...

At least 20 years ago, and probably more, I remember public statements being made by Wake, probably TK but not sure, that they felt Wake was too cheap and that they intended to intentionally and consistently raise the costs of attendance to be more in line with our peer schools. I would say they have been quite successful.

The tuition from the bulletin from my senior year of 1984 was $5050.
A double occupancy room was about $800/year.
The most expensive meal plan was $1340/year.

I don't know what to count for books and miscellaneous, but, it looks like the total cost of attendance in 1984 was probably no more than $8000... So basically a tenfold increase in 37 years or so.

Straight inflation would say that $8000 in 1984 is equivalent to around $21000 today.

wakephan09 said:

If you think wake is too expensive, you're right because all schools are too expensive

If you think wake is too expensive for its reputation then that is an opinion based on your understanding of our relative reputation (which I've already disagreed with above).

Clearly wake thinks at that cost it can continue to enroll the best students who can pay and subsidize the best students who can not.

A lot of us here, myself included, are bummed because rising prices mean we won't be able to give our kids the same wake experience we had. But what it really means is you won't be able to send them to a top private school anywhere. I'd be astonished to learn that the $1500 difference between wake and Stanford -- or between any of wake's peer schools, for that matter -- is making anybody's decision for them.

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yes, we agree that WF will charge what it can get away with charging. Pro Humanitate!

my point was that your list appeared to be cherry-picked; you included Penn but not Harvard; you included Northwestern and dook but not Stanford; more critically, you included a bunch of schools ranked ahead of WF (who in a perfect capitalistic model *should* charge more than WF) and zero schools ranked below WF

I view Stanford, Harvard, and MIT as life-changing schools for almost all who graduate from there. I don't view WF (or most of the schools you list) the same way.

thatguy2016 said:

my point was that your list appeared to be cherry-picked; you included Penn but not Harvard; you included Northwestern and dook but not Stanford; more critically, you included a bunch of schools ranked ahead of WF (who in a perfect capitalistic model *should* charge more than WF) and zero schools ranked below WF

I view Stanford, Harvard, and MIT as life-changing schools for almost all who graduate from there. I don't view WF (or most of the schools you list) the same way.

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Not quite cherrypicked but yes my opinion based on what I know about these schools.

Penn and Harvard are very different institutions, despite both bearing the "ivy" badge of prestige. They attract different kinds of students, have different liberal arts requirements for degrees (something I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about wake's peers), attract different kinds of faculty, publish different kinds of research through their UP.

Likewise, I don't associate Northwestern and duke with Stanford, though this one is closer.

I originally wrote out something long and boring to point out how comparing wake to MIT or Harvard or even Stanford makes no sense, not because wake isn't "life changing" but because these schools have different missions. Sure an English major at wake would have had a similar experience in English at Stanford or Harvard ("Literature" at MIT is a different beast entirely...check it out), but the institutions themselves are more different than they are similar. I'm interested though in why non-academics (for whom these rankings are produced and to whom they matter) would think they're the same.

(NB: coincidental examples bc with the exception of northwestern (and duke, obviously), I've been awarded fellowships, taken courses, or worked at all of these schools.)

The truth is that none of these schools are like wake. Wake is incredibly unusual, perhaps even unique in the education we offer undergrads. Some of that specialness diminishes as we add programs and increase enrollments, but there are still very few places that resemble our combination of SLAC experience and big research.

Where I think your logic fails is the assumption that a "better" school should naturally cost more. Tuition factors in a million different things.

Question for you, based on our conversation: what should wake charge (assuming it wants to maintain its reputation)?