And yet. Tuition costs have consistently risen well above the rate of inflation at most schools. “Dishonesty” is not the right term - it’s more like a game. And parents who don’t understand the game or don’t play it lose out. Typically these are the middle class parents.
Schools will say that tuition covers only a part of the expenses - they’ll have little graphs that show one fourth is covered by endowment, which they’ll ask you to contribute to each year.
But they won’t tell you about how bloated their admin staff has become over the decades. Nor does having amazing, state-of-the-art facilities have any relation to how good a time your child will have there, or how much learning will take place.
So yes, a lower tuition can be a good proxy for “honesty” in the sense of how the school is managed. Such as school probably won’t try to lure wealthy parents with tuition discounts. Such a school probably knows what is important and what is superfluous, and focuses on the former.