Saturday, 17 February 2024

Student Expenses from the 1910s

Christian Gauss, Through College on Nothing a Year, Literally Recorded from a Student's Story (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915), p. 74:
Student Expenses from the 1910s

Gauss reports the yearly expenses of a poor student at Princeton in the 1910s. Noting this anonymous student was paying a reduced rate of tuition, $320.90 in 1912 is reckoned to be equivalent to $10,203.20, according to an online calculator, today. 

The cost of attendance for 2024-25 at Princeton (not including transportation there and home again) is estimated at $86,700, broken down thus:
  • Tuition: $62,400.
  • Housing: $11,910.
  • Food: $8,340.
  • Estimated miscellaneous expenses: $4,050.
Costs have changed.