The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make

by Ron Lieber

Overview

Named one of the best books of 2021 by NPR

New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick

“Masterly . . .represents an extraordinary achievement: It is comprehensive and detailed without being tedious, practical without being banal, impeccably well judged and unusually rigorous.”—Daniel Markovits, New York Times Book Review

“Ron Lieber is a gift.”—Scott Galloway 

The hugely popular New York Times Your Money columnist and author of the bestselling The Opposite of Spoiled offers a deeply reported and emotionally honest approach to the biggest financial decision families will ever make: what to pay for college—a decision made even more confusing because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sending a teenager to a flagship state university for four years of on-campus living costs more than $100,000 in many parts of the United States. Meanwhile, many families of freshmen attending selective private colleges will spend triple—over $300,000. With the same passion, smarts, and humor that infuse his personal finance column, Ron Lieber offers a much-needed roadmap to help families navigate this difficult and often confusing journey. 

Lieber begins by explaining who pays what and why and how the financial aid system got so complicated. He also pulls the curtain back on merit aid, an entirely new form of discounting that most colleges now use to compete with peers.

While price is essential, value is paramount. So what is worth paying extra for, and how do you know when it exists in abundance at any particular school? Is a small college better than a big one? Who actually does the teaching? Given that every college claims to have reinvented its career center, who should we actually believe? He asks the tough questions of college presidents and financial aid gatekeepers that parents don’t know (or are afraid) to ask and summarizes the research about what matters and what doesn’t.

Finally, Lieber calmly walks families through the process of setting financial goals, explaining the system to their children and figuring out the right ways to save, borrow, and bargain for a better deal. 

The Price You Pay for College gives parents the clarity they need to make informed choices and helps restore the joy and wonder the college experience is supposed to represent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062867315
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	120,818
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ron Lieber is the author of The Opposite of Spoiled and is the Your Money columnist for the New York Times. Three of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he is a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award, business journalism’s highest honor. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, and their two daughters.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I The Price and Cost of College and the Systems Behind It

Chapter 1 Who Pays What and Why the Price Is So High 15

Chapter 2 Fafsa and Its Confounding Calculations Will Probably Make You Furious: Blame the Federal Government's Great Expectations 23

Chapter 3 How (and Why) Merit Aid Became Mainstream 35

Chapter 4 The Billion-Dollar Consultants Who Are Wooing You 43

Chapter 5 But Wait, Isn't Tuition a Bubble, and All of Higher Education Is Going to Come Apart at the Seams? 58

Part II The Unhelpful Feelings You May Feel

Chapter 6 Fear 71

Chapter 7 Guilt 76

Chapter 8 The Pull of Snobbery and Elitism 85

Part III Value: Things Worth Paying For

Chapter 9 Classrooms Where Experienced Instructors Have Time to Teach (and Actually Want To) 97

Chapter 10 Schools Where Students Learn (Because Many of Them Don't) 110

Chapter 11 Undergraduate Mental Health Centers That Are Not in Crisis 116

Chapter 12 Peers Worth Friending (or Marrying) 126

Chapter 13 The Special Power of Historically Women's Colleges 136

Chapter 14 Diversity in All Its Forms 140

Chapter 15 How and When Small School Size Matters 149

Chapter 16 Amenities (but Is a Lazy River a Plus?) 160

Chapter 17 Genuinely Reinvented Career Counseling Offices 168

Chapter 18 Places That Create Better Odds When Applying to Grad School 177

Chapter 19 Better Salaries When You Finish-if You Finish 181

Chapter 20 How the College of Wooster Puts It All Together 187

Part IV Money-Saving Hacks That Will Tempt You

Chapter 21 Community College Will Save You Money, but What Might You Lose? 199

Chapter 22 Honors Colleges and Programs Can Make Bigger Schools Smaller -if You Stick with the Program 207

Chapter 23 Attending College Abroad Is Often Cheaper, but You Won't Get What You Don't Pay For 214

Chapter 24 Athletic Scholarships for the Few (and Probably Not in Full or at Your First-Choice School) 221

Chapter 25 Gap Years: Great, Sometimes Pricey, Might Help You Get a Better Job Someday 225

Chapter 26 Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard: Decent Money, Big Responsibility 230

Chapter 27 Skipping College Is Probably Not a Great Idea 233

Part V The Plans: Saving, Talking, Touring, Bargaining, And Borrowing

Chapter 28 How to Make the Big Financial Plan 243

Chapter 29 How to Have the College Money Talk with Your Child 252

Chapter 30 All Your Questions About Saving for College and 529 Plans 260

Chapter 31 How to Shop for College (and Where to Find the Juicy Merit Aid Data) 274

Chapter 32 When (and How) to Hire an Independent College Counselor or Financial Planner 288

Chapter 33 How to Appeal Your Financial Aid Award 294

Chapter 34 All the Student Loan Basics in One Tidy Place 303

Chapter 35 One More Feeling: Hope 313

Acknowledgments 319

Notes 325

Bibliography 343

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

Masterly . . . represents an extraordinary achievement: It is comprehensive and detailed without being tedious, practical without being banal, impeccably well judged and unusually rigorous.” — Daniel Markovits, New York Times Book Review

“Lieber’s explanation of the system is probably the best I’ve seen from somebody outside it. His discussion of 'merit aid' even helped clarify some long-running arguments that have been mildly confusing me in faculty meetings for twenty years.” — Forbes

“A deeply reported, conventional-wisdom-busting guide to a subject that many of even the most financially adept and prepared individuals find terrifying. The book arrives at a moment when families are re-scrutinizing the price schools charge for tuition; how much debt students take on, and what exactly is worth the money and why.” — Town & Country

"An impressively thorough and genuinely useful manual for people staring up the sheer cliff of college tuition payments . . . It also contains an implicit analysis and critique of higher education as a system, by acknowledging the inequities that exist at every level from recruitment to admissions to financial aid. It’s a how-to book that will also make you think, 'But why?'" — New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

"Aims to provide parents and students financing their own way with the information they need to make more informed, financially sound goals and decisions." — Fortune

"Lieber helps families navigate this all-important financial decision by pulling back the curtain on the financial aid system and asking tough questions of financial aid gatekeepers. The end result is a book that helps families determine what they value—a metric even more important than the sticker tag of college." — Forbes (9 College Admissions Books for the Post-Pandemic Era)

“Ron Lieber is a gift.” — Scott Galloway, author of Post Corona and The Four

“Ron will hold you by the hand, by the heart and by the head.” — Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult

“Books like these are conversation grenades. You throw them in a room and conversations break out.” — Carl Richards, author of The Behavior Gap

"[The Price You Pay for College] outlines higher education pricing dynamics with painstaking care and clarity. . . . Lieber offers an essential guidebook for helping each student to find their path forward.  — John Lewis, Head of School, The Gunston School 

“If you have a teen headed for college in a few years, you literally can’t afford to skip this candid guide by The New York Times' 'Your Money' columnist Ron Lieber. He grills college presidents and financial aid gatekeepers to answer all your biggest questions about the right ways to save, borrow and bargain for a better deal." — Audrey Goodson Kingo, Working Mother Magazine

From the Publisher

A deeply reported, conventional-wisdom-busting guide to a subject that many of even the most financially adept and prepared individuals find terrifying. The book arrives at a moment when families are re-scrutinizing the price schools charge for tuition; how much debt students take on, and what exactly is worth the money and why.

Town & Country

"Aims to provide parents and students financing their own way with the information they need to make more informed, financially sound goals and decisions."

Fortune

"Lieber helps families navigate this all-important financial decision by pulling back the curtain on the financial aid system and asking tough questions of financial aid gatekeepers. The end result is a book that helps families determine what they value—a metric even more important than the sticker tag of college."

Forbes (9 College Admissions Books for the Post-Pandemic Era)

Books like these are conversation grenades. You throw them in a room and conversations break out.

Carl Richards

Ron Lieber is a gift.

Scott Galloway

"[The Price You Pay for College] outlines higher education pricing dynamics with painstaking care and clarity. . . . Lieber offers an essential guidebook for helping each student to find their path forward. 

John Lewis

Ron will hold you by the hand, by the heart and by the head.

Julie Lythcott-Haims

Masterly . . . represents an extraordinary achievement: It is comprehensive and detailed without being tedious, practical without being banal, impeccably well judged and unusually rigorous.

Daniel Markovits

Lieber’s explanation of the system is probably the best I’ve seen from somebody outside it. His discussion of 'merit aid' even helped clarify some long-running arguments that have been mildly confusing me in faculty meetings for twenty years.

Forbes

If you have a teen headed for college in a few years, you literally can’t afford to skip this candid guide by The New York Times' 'Your Money' columnist Ron Lieber. He grills college presidents and financial aid gatekeepers to answer all your biggest questions about the right ways to save, borrow and bargain for a better deal."

Audrey Goodson Kingo

2020-10-07
Can you pay for college without being broke until long after retirement? Sure—and this book offers plenty of pointers on how to do so.

Today, attending a top-flight school can cost nearly $350,000. Yet, as New York Times financial columnist Lieber asks, pointedly, “what is the return on investment going to be?” There are other questions: Which schools are better at which disciplines? What kind of financial aid is available? Is your child suited for college? One central question, of course, is why higher education is so expensive. The answers are several, ranging from the recent movement of cash-strapped states to reduce or eliminate education funding to the fact that highly educated people—the tenured professors whom students usually encounter only in their junior or senior years—expect to be paid a decent wage, as do the endless layers of administrators and support staff. Lieber counsels that there are remedies available, though not even a committed high school guidance counselor can possibly know how to navigate them all: A student can go to community college to satisfy basic requirements, for example, though he or she better do the homework to be sure all the credits will transfer to their university of choice. A student can join the military and get GI Bill support. However, writes the author, “anyone considering enlisting in the armed forces for financial reasons alone should please think hard about the uncertainty they’re signing up for.” Perhaps his most important point is that in most instances, college tuition is negotiable and that the worst thing that can happen if you ask for a break is to be told no. But is college worth it? Quite apart from the educational aspect, Lieber holds, the answer to his first question is that the annualized ROI “is about 14 percent.” Given that the stock market is typically half that, it’s not a bad bet.

A revealing and useful guide for the aspiring consumer of higher education.

Kirkus Reviews