Bradshaw: The real cost of college — Dollars, status, and the futures we buy

Every spring, hundreds of thousands of families across America face the same question: what is the true value of a college education? The numbers, at first glance, are staggering. At Purdue University, four years of in-state tuition plus room and board costs about $100,000. At Harvard University, the sticker price runs close to $400,000. To many families, that gap seems unbridgeable. But as with so much in American higher education, the sticker price conceals more than it reveals.

From sticker shock to subsidy

Elite private universities — Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the University of Chicago — are quick to point out that few students actually pay full price. Harvard’s financial aid program makes college effectively free for families earning less than $80,000 a year. Families earning up to $