On The Other Hand, A Dog Doesn’t Require A Graduation Fee

New York City private school tuition surpasses Harvard:

Tuition and fees at some New York City private high schools will cost more than $30,000 for the school year beginning in September 2006, breaking a new barrier in sticker shock for parents.

New York already boasts the highest private school tuitions in the country, but prices at some schools will now surpass even the cost of sending a child to Harvard. Many parents have been notified about the tuition increases over the past few weeks.

Riverdale Country School, located on a leafy oasis in the Bronx, will charge $31,200 for tuition, lunch, and books for grades six through 12. Bus service from Manhattan costs an additional couple of thousand dollars. At the Trinity School on the Upper West Side, tuition for seniors will reach $30,170, which includes a $400 “graduation fee.”

. . .

At $30,000 a year for kindergarten through 12th grade, parents are looking to spend about $400,000 before their children even get to college.

Undergraduate tuition at Harvard this year is $28,752, plus room and board.

“We’re so out of whack that we think that it’s okay to pay more for Riverdale than for Harvard — people around the country are laughing at us,” the founder of the Manhattan Private School Advisors, Amanda Uhry, said.

Ms. Uhry, who charges parents $6,000 to help get their children into private school, said the $30,000-a-year price tag won’t cause most of her clients even to blink.

“The reason they charge as much as they do is the same reason I charge as much as I do — because I can,” she said. [Emph. added because it’s obvious]

Sorry about what I said before, I didn’t mean to judge.