Elite schools like Harvard and Stanford are way better deals than you think

Theres an easy solution to the problem of finding a great higher education at an affordable price.Just go to Harvard.Sure, hardly anybody has the grades, overstuffed extracurricular schedule, or parental connections to get in. But Harvardwhere annual tuition, room, board, and fees clocks in north of $60,000is actually an incredible deal.Thats because pretty much no one pays full sticker price. According to updated data released earlier this month on the 2014-15 academic year by the U.S. Department of Education, the average net pricewhat people actually pay, accounting for expenses and financial aidwas only $14,000.The price is lower if you come from a middle-class family. Families earning between $30,000 to $75,000 a year typically paid only a little more than $5,000, according to the Education Department.The same goes for almost all the top schools. The average net price for middle-class families at Stanford was a bit more than $6,000. Princeton' Roughly $5,000.Meanwhile, annual earnings for a typical Harvard grad are $68,900 six years after graduation. Stanford grads six years out' An astronomically high $71,000. Schools offering relatively low prices for middle-class families and high earnings after graduation cluster at the upper left in the chart below, where we looked at costs and earnings for students at roughly more than 700 public and private colleges and universities in 2015.The bottom right is reserved for expensive schools where students dont earn much when they graduate. You dont have to be Sherlock Holmes to notice that a lot of them are art schools. We emailed representatives of the schools we named. Pratt Institutes provost, Kirk E. Pillow, sent us a statement noting that teacher expenses tend to be much higher at art schools due to small class sizes and low student/faculty ratios.While graduates from art and design schools may not always yield the highest salaries compared to high-paying fields like medicine, business, law, and engineering, students who follow their creative passion reap rewards that cant be quantified in a paycheck, Pillow said.Berklee College of Music President Roger Brown has argued that the Federal data on collegesknown as the College Scorecardunfairly stigmatizes art schools.The Scorecard takes a flawed, one-size fits all approach, he told us in a statement.They make some goodpoints. This is an admittedly simple way of looking at things. College isnt just about how much it costs and how much you get paid when youre done.Still, if youre going to be taking on the kind of debt that comes with a college degree today, youre wise to take a cold, hard look at the numbers.SEE ALSO:http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-negotiate-tuition-cost-2016-10Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: This is how often guys should wash their hair
Click here to read full news..