I graduated from St. Mary’s, a private Episcopalian school in Memphis, in 1999. According to their website, tuition(plus student fees) is $9660 for 8-12 graders. That price was for the 2000-2001 school year, but I doubt it’s changed too much. In high school we also had to buy our books which usually ran the price up another 4-5 hundred a year.
-Lil
Rhythmdvl: Anyone know of less prestigious, cheaper schools? Are there a lot of them? Wonder if the tax credit will open up new markets for lower end (cost-wise) schools.
Recall that most private schools either have income from a supporting institution such as a national or international church, a private endowment generally including buildings and grounds, serious fundraising connections, or some or all of the above. It is really hard to run an educational enterprise on tuition revenue alone, says Kimstu the Broken Record (this has come up in other threads just recently). I doubt that there will be too many entrepreneurs clamoring for the opportunity to provide high-quality education (especially at the high school level, which is the most expensive) for $1500 a head per year. (Existing for-profit charter schools have had very mixed results, according to this US News article.)
Also note that cheaper does not mean less prestigious. The high school I went to (Cleveland Benedictine HS, 1990-1995) was the best in the city, and only cost about $3000 a year, without dioscean support (I can’t seem to find current numbers on the webpage, but it hasn’t been that long since I was there). Interestingly, it was probably also the most racially diverse school in the city, private or public.
For those interested in more details, it’s a small (approx. 320 students) Catholic college-prep school, non-boarding.