Based on the list, with Williams at #2, endowment doesn’t seem to impact the list price. A bigger endowment may mean more $ for scholarships, facilities, and/or special programs, but nobody seems to be using it to lower cost of attendance for full pay students. The differences in published cost are small compared to the differences in endowment.
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Agree…most, maybe all of these schools, are subsidizing even the full pay students. Meaning what they are spending each year to deliver an education costs more than the full tuition.
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Not maybe. Definitely.
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It’s an almost all-NESCAC semi-finals in women’s lacrosse:
You have to think Middlebury will repeat but that’s why they play the games.
I like our [conference] chances to bring home a natty. Tufts men are playing RIT for the men’s national championship.
Clearly, if you want to be recruited to a sport in the NESCAC, lacrosse may not be your best bet. There are so many quality programs, and a serious juggernaut at Midd on the women’s side, who remind me of what Williams women’s soccer used to be.
This list is obviously not well researched. I’d venture to say someone simply asked AI for a list and added a few graphics.
Bates is simply doing what many other elite colleges do. Imagine any of the NESCACs lowering tuition in any substantial way? Maybe Amherst could do it because they have the biggest endowment. It’s just not going to happen at Bates, barring some huge donation. Bates students aren’t lacking in experiences or resources so at least on a student-perception level, it doesn’t seem to be a big issue.
If you look at the comments on the post of that list, they fall into the following general categories:
- Stakeholders defending their school on “it was worth it” grounds.
- Stakeholders pointing out the generous financial aid available and that many students don’t pay the sticker price.
- Those expressing dismay at the idea of paying that much for an undergraduate education, like this guy:
- Those who want to make sure everybody knows that their school is even more expensive than what is listed (to the point raised upthread that some people are actually proud of their school being expensive, which I find curious).
- Those, like many in this thread, who are annoyed their school wasn’t on the list. I still find this perplexing as well, as publicity about those numbers doesn’t seem to be a great thing. I myself would prefer that my child’s school were not listed (much less in the top 5). But to each his/her own. I wouldn’t think the typical response would be, “Oh, look at how expensive it is to go to Vassar! So impressive!” To the contrary, it would seem to invite criticism.
Forbes 2026 Financial Grades
A+ (with all receiving a maximum Forbes GPA of 4.5)
Williams
Bowdoin
Amherst
Colby
Hamilton
Wesleyan
Tufts
A-
Connecticut College
Trinity
Middlebury
B+
Bates
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A very good showing indeed.
Deleted.
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"one afternoon last fall, a class full of Amherst seniors forgot I was there. ..
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Mean: A
Median: A+
Mode: A+
Range: A+ to B+
Tufts 17 RIT 11 in NCAA D III Men’s Lacrosse championship for the threepeat
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Gift link:
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Thank you for sharing!
I teach at a SLAC and on the last day of a seminar, we had the most amazing discussion about the reading - so elevated, so intellectual, and everyone was practically vibrating with interest and engagement. It was heavenly. Nothing can replace that experience.
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Congrats to the Middlebury women’s lacrosse team for repeating as national champions, upending Wesleyan in the title game. In fact, this is Middlebury’s fifth straight national title, which is mind boggling given how competitive I know lacrosse to be.
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An interesting post discussing the value of a NESCAC education and how these schools can better prepare students for the new future
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Great piece. Thanks for posting.
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This should be pinned somewhere. Says the quiet part out loud.
The argument for value at these prices is harder and harder to make. The benefits are replicable at much lower price points for a much broader set of consumers. I think the author said something like luxury goods item. This is increasingly true, in my opinion.
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We actually need the next generation of elite college graduates to become founders and founding team members more urgently than we need them to become new hires at blue-chip firms. Not because those firms don’t matter, but because the problems that most need solving in this economy are not going to be solved by large institutions moving slowly. They’re going to be solved by small, fast, mission-driven teams who can deploy AI as a force multiplier from day one.
Like a film crew. I’ve been saying for years that the most entrepreneurial enterprises you can find on any college campus today can probably be found among the film majors putting the finishing touches on their senior thesis projects; they require the same executive functioning of a start-up; they take up days and weeks of 18 hour days, not the least of which because the kids are working on six or seven projects all at the same time. It doesn’t mean any of them will ever make a dime from what they are doing - far from it. But it’s basically the same model of a small team working to produce something of value. And it’s right there underneath the noses of some of the least “pre-professional” colleges in the country, if only they scale it up in order to develop access points that would appeal to a broader range of interests.
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I appreciate the perspective, but I disagree with the diagnosis and the proposed solution.
First, I reject his premise that AI can do the “heavy lifting” of “research, synthesis, summarization, and coordination.” It can’t. Just because some companies say it can—and are using it as an excuse to cut headcount—doesn’t make it so. In fact, some of these companies have acknowledged that their assumptions about AI’s ability to replace humans have been wrong.
Second, the answer is not to further atomize groups into smaller units—we NEED institutions to solve problems. Yes, smaller groups can move more quickly. But they then need the scale of larger institutions for the solutions to have impact. There is no future of a million 10-person units solving the world’s problems. The size of NIH and USAID was never the issue; on the contrary—it’s why they were able to have the impact they had. The problem was that trust in institutions declined over decades, leaving them vulnerable to people who wanted to undermine them and got the power to do so.
I have a student at one of these schools, and I would be extremely unhappy if I heard that it was emphasizing an “entrepreneurship” mindset. Not because the skills he references (“identify a problem worth solving, understand it rigorously and from multiple disciplines, and figure out how to marshal limited resources toward a solution”) aren’t valuable but because I fervently believe liberal arts education already does this. We don’t need these schools to spend time and resources on an “entrepreneurship” gimmick. We need them to keep producing thoughtful, analytical, ethical people and prepare them to engage with the world and rebuild (or build new) institutions that can have the sort of impact that has been lost.
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