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Comment by dpierce9 | Hacker News Reader

Private high school costs have also gone up astronomically and there are no federal loans for them.

[0] https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-private-school

This says that the average private highschool tuition is $15,645. In 2003, the average private highschool tuition was $8,412 (Snyder, Dillow, & Hoffman, 2008), or $14,079 (in today's dollars).

Please correct me if I've made some mistake, but plugging those numbers in shows that the annualized real increase in price is 0.5% per year over 20 years. Looks like doing the same thing for public 4 year college over the same timespan results in an annual real increase in 2.1%

The first bullet says: “$23,839 is the average annual tuition among the nation’s private K-12 schools.”

Edit: it looks like there is an error on this page. The bar chart the numbers are much higher. Anecdotally, private high school is always more expensive than private elementary. That is what the bar chart shows but not the bullets.

In your post, you said "private high school."

I think the average high school price is incorrect. I would love to see better data. I edited my previous bullet to reflect this.

Where does it say that?

Btw private school looks quite affordable. I used to think my neighbor was rich, they were, but for only $20k/yr you can send 2 kids to private school? That is cheaper than daycare.

Daycare is considered by many to be very expensive and a lot of parents would prefer not to (or can't!) pay daycare prices until their kids leave the house.

Depends on the city… in Los Angeles private schools can push $70k/yr/student easily; In the Bay Area I would imagine even higher. In Dallas, where I grew up and went to the same school for much less, tuition is now around $40k/student/year for top private schools.

The highest I've found in the bay area are a small handful of residential private schools (e.g. Athenian is $82k for boarding students). Most of the top private day schools are still <$50k/yr, but I strongly suspect they top that once fees & "discretionary" expenses are added.

There is a chart at the bottom. Costs doubled over twenty years since 1999, directly comparable to the college rate over the same period and well above inflation.

According to that chart, by "well above inflation" you mean "<20% above inflation" and by "comparable to the college rates" you mean ">100% above inflation".

Your use of generalizations seems radically inconsistent.

If you're paying $20k for daycare and there's not really a free option, that's just what you have to do.

If you're paying $20k for private school, and there's a free option (public school) - you obviously have a healthy amount of disposable income.

But once you've become sensitized to the impact of paying for daycare on your budget, it's easy to logically just continue the same budget and funnel the same money to a different school.

This. I put my kid into daycare because it didn't cost more than daycare and I'd been paying it this long, what was paying it forever when I'm financially stable. My kid is special needs and the public school would have never accommodated her like this private school has.

> If you're paying $20k for private school,

The link says the average for HS is $15.6k; if that's a mathematical mean, that's going to be driven up by a handful of very expensive schools.

> and there's a free option (public school)

Most public schools in the US are garbage.

> - you obviously have a healthy amount of disposable income.

Or make frugal choices elsewhere, or receive scholarships/ financial aid, likely both.

Yes, that's right, parents can drive an older car and skip buying a bigger TV and cook at home and save money in all kinds of ways, and private schools offer scholarships and financial aid to advance missions of service.

> Or make frugal choices elsewhere, or receive scholarships/ financial aid, likely both.

Most people are already doing that and still can't spend $20k to send their children to a non-"garbage" school.

The private school near me is 55k per child. And that’s typical for this area

And what is your point. Average rates were noted.

The study also does average and median prices and increases.

Of course there is variability. What does you living in a higher cost of living area have to do with the points in this thread. Are you distributing?

Or just wanted to note that there are outliers that factor into the average? Maybe there’s something noteworthy about your private schools, but please add more info.

This is really interesting, but has it outpaced inflation ? Did not see that skimming the site.

There is a chart at the bottom. Costs doubled over twenty years since 1999, directly comparable to the college rate over the same period and well above inflation.

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