Look past the $90k price tag

It doesn’t matter how good it is. No college on the planet is worth $90,000 per year.

But that’s what a bunch of New England colleges will be charging now. As a middle class parent hoping to avoid subsisting on dog food in my golden years, I felt sick when I read last week’s news, about Boston University, Tufts, Wellesley, and Yale now charging $90,000 for tuition, housing, and other expenses.

I have a kid who will be in college in a couple of years. My family has been putting money into the state’s U.Plan for more than a decade, but what we’ve managed to save so far — a significant sum, for us — would cover but a sliver of tuition at a private school, let alone living expenses.

So I had a little freak-out when I read the news. As did a bunch of parents and kids with high hopes, I’m sure.

Do the dorm rooms have turndown service? Does Michelin-starred Nordic fermentation pioneer René Redzepi run the cafeteria? Are the Bunsen burners made of gold?

The freak-out worries Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley who studies tuition costs. Sure, $90,000 is outrageous, but that’s the maximum cost to attend these schools, he said. Most students won’t be paying anywhere near that. That’s something too many people don’t know, and that troubles him, because it means some are discouraged from applying to great schools they might be able to afford.

“The sticker price is largely irrelevant for most people,” he said. At a school like Wellesley, “you’d have to be making at least $300,000 with typical assets to pay it.”

Indeed, at many schools, actual tuition costs are falling for many students, Levine argues.

Only about 40 percent of students at Wellesley pay full tuition, he said. Most others pay about $40,000 or less — sometimes much less — he estimates, courtesy of financial aid, and wealthier classmates whose top dollar tuition helps cover their costs.

And though some of us may still wince at

$40,000 per year, because let’s face it, that is also ridiculous, those costs aren’t quite as bloated as they seem, Levine said. Consider the fact that Wellesley public schools spend $25,000 per student each year — and they don’t house them. It costs way more money to run a university, even without the fancy dorms and fresh sushi — amenities, by the way, which Levine says pay for themselves because they attract higher-paying international students to private schools, and out-of-state students to public ones.

Looked at that way, $40,000 doesn’t seem outrageous. Unless you’re in the group that has to come up with it — families that Levine estimates make over $150,000 per year.

Too few people understand all of this because most colleges and universities are deliberately opaque when it comes to their true tuition costs.

The federal government requires them to provide calculators so families can estimate the true cost of attending, but most of these digital tools don’t work very well. So Levine has designed his own, at MyinTuition.org, which gives more reliable cost estimates for some 70 schools so far.

“Students and families ... need to make informed decisions, based on facts,” he said.

Since we’ve decided to avoid loans, it’ll probably be state school for our darling, barring some miracle. Which is hardly a bargain, since the sticker price at UMass Amherst is also pushing 40 grand per year. That’s a crime for a public institution — even a terrific one. But that’s a column for another day.

And here again, that sticker price is just the sticker price for many students. The MASSGrant Plus program provides free tuition and fees at the state’s public colleges, universities, and community colleges, plus $1,200 for books and supplies, for families earning less than $73,000 per year. Those earning between $73,000 and $100,000 get a 50 percent break on tuition. And community college is now free for anyone over 25 without a degree, regardless of income.

Even these breaks leave those schools beyond the reach of families with the lowest incomes, who can ill afford room and board, or to forgo work for study.

Things aren’t as grim as the sticker prices make them appear, but Lord, we still have so much work to do.