What It Costs To Go To College – In Monopoly Money

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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discover that college degrees are expensive (though it does take an expensive college degree to become a rocket scientist). With tuition, books, and room and board, the annual cost of college easily surpasses what most people make in a year. When it’s all said and done, it’s amazing that there’s any money left for Solo cups or NuvaRings.

But exactly how much is “so much?” How can high school kids who’ve yet to spend money on anything other than iTunes and candy possibly understand just how expensive college is?

This is $100,000. Not that impressive.

The first thing that we did was to create a universal, average price for four years of college. According to data collected from U.S. News and World Report, as well as collegeboard.com, the average tuition cost for a state school is around $9,000 per year, while private schools hover around $27,000 per year. Assuming we split the difference, the average cost of tuition at any given college is about $18,000 per year.

Now, it’s important to remember that $18,000 only gets you in the door. There are additional costs, such as room and board (averaging $8,000 per year), books (averaging $1,000 per year), and personal expenses (averaging $2,000 per year). When all is said and done, that brings the total universal average up to $29,000 per year. Assuming some unforeseen expenses, that pegs 4 years of college at roughly $120,000.

But what is 120 grand to a 17-year-old? Perhaps the best way to illustrate just how much college costs is to display it visually, using Monopoly money.

3-D makes everything creepier

Some Monopoly/College Fun Facts:

• Each Monopoly board game contains $15,140 worth of Monopoly money.
• In order to come up with enough Monopoly money to finance college, you need to purchase eight complete board games.
• Monopoly debuted in 1935. Adjusted for inflation, the $15,000 in the Monopoly bank is equivalent to roughly $240,000 today.
• Today’s average cost of college — $120,000 — held the same buying power as $7,500 in 1935. This means that the money spent on college would be enough to purchase every single piece of land on the Monopoly game board, with $1,810 left over.
• Adjusted for inflation, passing “Go” today would yield $3,200.
• The iron is the worst piece. By far. Nobody ever picks the iron.

Come on. It’s an iron.

In preparation for this assignment, we bought eight complete Monopoly sets, just for the money. However, it is worth noting that twenty of the bills in each pack are the elusive, completely made-up $500 bill, which pack significantly more bang for their Monopoly buck.

Pretty packages

At first glance, this is not an overwhelming amount of Monopoly cash. After all, the point here is to show a staggering amount of money, and forced perspective aside, this pile still looks pretty tame. Which is why the logical next step is to sort and stack the Monopoly money using the proper method.

High to low, left to right. Anyone who does it differently is a communist.

Once sorted, the stacks begin to tell the tale. Remember, a full $80,000 of the $120,000 exists solely in the made-up $500 bill pile. Were that to be converted to $100 bills, the stack would be twice as high as the stack of 20’s. But, Monopoly is Monopoly, so the 500’s stay.

With a stack like this, it’d be hard to imagine anyone not having the upper hand in an actual game of Monopoly. Unless they enjoy using the standard method of cash storage…

Do not pass Go… because your piece will fall off the table.

Once again, this stack of cash is impressive, but not overwhelming. At this point, the main reason for that is the pristine condition of the bills. Few people get their money directly from the mint, which means that circulated cash has significantly more volume than brand new Monopoly money.

All of a sudden, 10 dollars looks huge.

After mashing some bills up, it became obvious that a standard dining room table would not be capable of managing the load. It was at this point that having a vintage 1940’s soaking tub came in handy.

This thing is deep.

In true Scrooge McDuck fashion, it began to look as though people could easily bathe in the money they’d use to finance their education. In fact, if college-bound students had $120,000 in cash, and that money was converted to quarters, and there was a bathtub that could support the three tons those coins would weigh, it would be doubtful that anyone would ever go to college at all. How could you?

90 feet is crazy deep. We strongly doubt the accuracy of the Scrooge McDuck gold coin depth gauge.

At this point, it’s important to remember why many people go to college in the first place: to meet members of the opposite sex.

Let’s get sexy

Nothing says lovin’ like a king bed covered in 120 grand, even if it is fake. In college, even the most financially stable students still need to wait for the good Ramen to go on sale, which means that even the illusion of wealth can set you apart. Good luck finding a dorm room with a bed this big.

Of course, this is all just a fantasy. Nobody pays for their college education in cash, as there is no practical way of acquiring that much liquid cashflow…

…and no real escape plan in the event that things go wrong.

One thing is for sure: no matter how valuable a college education is, it’s hard not to feel like getting that diploma is the easiest way to watch $120,000 go up in smoke. Which reminds us… what do you do with 120 large in play money when you’re done with it?

That’s the way it goes.

If you’re interested in learning more about getting a private student loan to fund that crazy expensive education, click to explore the site.

Image credits: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2512/3721073461_0a159717cc.jpg
Reference: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp