[oppositelock]

I'm a Brown grad, who graduated in the mid 90's. In the mid 90's, Brown's tuition was an unthinkable $32k/year, if I remember correctly. As an immigrant with no family assets, I got a big financial aid package, and being a Rhode Islander, I also got a state grant, and took the rest as loans. It was just barely doable for someone who didn't have family assets. Today, it seems truly impossible.

Since I'm from Providence, I visit Brown regularly when I visit my family, since I have lots of memories from the time. Today's campus looks very little like it did in the 90's. We had dumpy dorms, crappy cafeterias, and rather plain, but functional buildings. Today, the dorms have been renovated or rebuilt to be much more luxurious, the school has built a number of incredibly opulent buildings, and there's just a whole lot more space and more wealth on display. The total enrollment went from somewhere around 8,000 then to about 10,000 today, so it's not that they're building these things to handle more students.

It seems that per-student spending has gone way up, and they're now providing a luxury education experience, not just a degree.

[flappyeagle]

Today every ivy has need based tuition discounts, so it's probably easier than ever before to afford for those of limited means

[pc86]

A HS friend of mine went to Penn and for a brief period of time was an admissions counsellor there. She said many times that if you were smart enough to get in, the administration would do everything in its power to get you whatever grants, scholarships, and loans you needed to get in. She was there probably 7 or 8 years and could recall less than 1/yr where someone was admitted but did not attend due to cost.

Mediocre colleges will leave you on your own 99% of the time but if you're good enough to get into an Ivy or a similarly leveled school like Stanford or MIT it's very unlikely that cost will be the determining factor (not that it will be easy of course).

[fnordpiglet]

“Lifestyle education”

[red-iron-pine]

It's an Ivy League, there is an implied class -- and I ain't talkin about school.

There are lifestyle expectations, either because the well off folks expect it, or those trying to gain a foothold believe that to be something that they have / will have earned.