Hacker News Reader

That's my reading, too. If top schools have a great return on investment, then the total returns must be significantly higher because of the size of the investment.

Exactly, that confused me too. It would be like saying all the schools cost the same because the interest rate for student loans is the same regardless of amount. There is a huge difference between paying 5% on $1,000 and 5% on $100,000.

Its also interesting that they did the cost net of financial aid, so probably looking at the average cost of the degree, creating a much larger variance than the data set indicates.

Only for rich parents. (We'd need to see what they actually paid, rather than sticker price).

Often they don't. Maybe by nominative tuition, but not by median.