Tuition

Once I left Sciences Po, gone were the days of mandatory class attendance. Yet the days of aimless ruminations born out of a need to reaffirm one’s identity in the halls of yet a new institution were near.

Barnard will charge $55,781 in tuition for the upcoming 2019-20 academic year, Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldberg and Co-Interim Deans of the College Natalie Friedman and Alicia Lawrence announced in an email to students Friday morning.

Undergraduate tuition and fees for Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science are projected to reach an all-time high of $62,000 for the 2019-2020 academic year, Dean of Columbia College James Valentini announced at a recent Arts and Sciences faculty meeting. This latest price hike will make Columbia the most expensive undergraduate school in the nation.

At its second meeting of the semester, the Columbia College Student Council discussed textbook affordability for low-income students, largely focusing on an ill-received proposal that would increase tuition by $600 per year to cover textbook costs for all students.

Undergraduates at Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies will be charged $56,608 in tuition in the 2018-2019 academic year, according to an email sent to students Friday morning by Associate Vice President of Student Financial Services Jane Hojan-Clark.

Barnard College will charge $53,252 in tuition for the 2018-2019 academic year, according to an email sent to students Thursday morning by Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldberg and Dean of the College Avis Hinkson.

When Elsa Lama, SVA ’18, chose to attend Columbia’s Masters of Fine Arts Visual Arts program in 2016, she was drawn by the promise of participating in an interdisciplinary program with renowned faculty, peers, and the resources of an Ivy League university.

I had a great summer. I de-stressed at home in a comparatively sleepy Boston area and lived a life free of the imposing dread of assignments and the forced late nights that come with them. My job as a cashier at the local Target provided a healthy change of pace, and my internship at Revere city hall brought me closer to the community that I felt removed from while at Columbia.

Good afternoon. And it is a very good afternoon, because after today there is one, I repeat, just one day of classes left in the school year.

Barnard has announced that tuition for the 2017-2018 school year will be $50,882, up more than 4.6 percent from last year’s tuition fee of $48,614.