The number of families choosing to send their children to private schools this school year is on the rise — even as the cost of tuition rises to record levels, a recent report from S&P Global Ratings (SPGI) revealed.
More than half of all private schools reported a year-over-year increase in autumn enrollment, with 8% of those schools seeing an increase of 3% or more, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the report. This increase comes as the average cost of attending boarding school increased from 5.3% to $73,080 and the cost of tuition for private day schools went up 7.4% to $49,284.
In addition to tuition increasing to record highs, the percentage increase in day school tuition between 2023 and 2024 was the largest jump in at least a decade. The S&P analysts attributed the dramatic increase to schools finally adjusting the cost of attendance to match post-pandemic levels of inflation.
“They were trying not to lose any of their market share by keeping tuition down,” Alexander Enriquez, an associate director at S&P, told Bloomberg. “There’s a sense that there’s an ability to control the pricing from the school’s end.”
The average cost of private school attendance, from kindergarten through high school, is $312,026, according to the Education Data Initiative. That average tends to increase when looking at private schools located in the northeast — with Connecticut schools having the highest cost of private education in the country. Other high-cost hotspots include California, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
To determine the most expensive boarding schools in the U.S., Quartz reviewed the combined cost of tuition and fees, before financial aid, at more than 50 highly-ranked boarding schools. While schools in the northeast tended to be more expensive, in aggregate, it was California high schools that dominated the list of the nation’s most expensive boarding schools.
Continue reading to learn about the most expensive boarding schools in America.
