Harvey Mudd College 7th Most Expensive in Nation According to Forbes.com

Harvey Mudd College, the local institution for propeller-heads and other nerdy types has just made the Forbes.com list of the nation's top ten most expensive institutions of higher learning, garnering honors in the Number 7 spot.

America's Most Expensive Colleges--Number 7

click image to enlarge

Topping the list was Sarah Lawrence at $57,556 yearly, followed by:

2. Columbia University, $54,385
3. Bard College, $54,275
4. Wesleyan University, $53,976
5. Vanderbilt, $53,660
6. University of Chicago, $53,604
7. Harvey Mudd College, $53,588
8. Trinity College, $53,380
9. Georgetown University, $53,340
10. Bates College, $53,300

Observant readers might note in the screenshot above, that Forbes has the enrollment wrong at 200 students (that might have been the enrollment forty years ago), and you wonder what else they are not getting right.

Still, fifty-three Large is a lot of dough. But HMC president Maria Klawe is doubtless used to large numbers. We see in a flyer sent by CUSD--Oh! excuse us; we mean the private and totally independent "Support Claremont Schools" committee--that Mudd president Maria Klawe (right) endorses the $95,000,000 Measure CL. "One can't shovel too much money into education"--that must be her thought.

Education, along with health care, has sported the highest rate of price increases of any sector of the economy for decades. By our admittedly crude and offhand calculation, the Claremont Colleges have raised prices by an average of something like 7.25 %, compounded, over at least a generation. The CPI increase over the same period has been "only" 4.4%. So institutions like President Klawe's have been inflating their prices about 65 percent faster than the economy as a whole.

But then, higher education shares the same pricing model as a used car lot: There is the sticker price and then there is the price you pay. Many students get subsidies--in higher ed these are called "scholarships"--participants in the sector's own private income-transfer plan.

Too bad the institution President Klawe runs, Harvey Mudd College, won't have to participate in paying for the school measure she supports because non-profits, such as the colleges and some of the retirement homes in town, are exempted from paying property taxes.