Average Cost of Private High School Tuition by Region

The trends in private K-12 school costs also seem to correspond with those for private colleges. New England is home to the most expensive private, four-year colleges in the country, their tuition and fees averaging $39,200 this year, according to the College Board. Private, four-year colleges in the South, on the other hand, charged $27,400 on average this year.

It would appear, then, that denser population centers come with higher sticker prices for private schools. And that makes sense—but not necessarily because private schools charge more in places where there are more people or a larger demand for private education. Rather, densely populated places tend to have higher costs of living, and higher costs of living mean higher costs of doing business, says Myra McGovern of NAIS.

"You’re running a nonprofit, a small business," McGovern said. "You want to make sure your employees can afford to live in the areas they have to work, particularly because independent schools require a pretty big time commitment from staff."

About three-fourths of a private school’s budget typically goes toward salaries and benefits, according to McGovern. (That distribution generally mirrors public school spending, with about 80 percent of public education budgets nationwide spent on salaries and benefits during the 2010-11 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.) That explains why private schools in areas with higher costs of living such as New York City generally cost much more than those in less expensive parts of the country, like Memphis: The tuition has to support the schools’ teachers—teachers who, it’s worth noting, generally earn less than their public school counterparts.

"It’s not a perfect correlation," McGovern acknowledged. "But it is a clear correlation."

Still, other factors unrelated to a region’s local economy could be at play, too. Private schools on the East Coast tend to be older and often subscribe to conventional, college-prep pedagogies; in other words, they can charge more because they’re prestigious. Long legacies also tend to mean more diverse, individualized course offerings—and more programs mean more costs, McGovern noted.



Demand for private school education does tell part of the story, but it’s ultimately hard to draw comparisons with price, according to McGovern. The Northeast has the highest rate of private-school attendance: 14 percent of its school-age children were enrolled in private institutions in 2009, the most recent year the National Center for Education Statistics tracked such data. But in the West—home to some of the highest tuition figures—just 8 percent of students were enrolled in private schools that year, the lowest attendance rate in the country. Nationally, one out of every 10 students was in a private school that year.

"There’s a perception out there that private schools just charge whatever the market will bear," McGovern said. "That’s really not how the majority of schools factor tuition at all."

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