Art College Universities Price Schools Starving Artists Money

We sometimes describe "artists" - painters, writers, sculptors, and more - as "starving artists." "To starve" means to be very hungry, so hungry that you are slowly dying. To say "I'm starving," however, usually just means "I'm very, very hungry." But we describe artists as starving because they often don't make very much money, and so don't have money to buy food.

A 2012 article in the New York Times may help explain why artists don't have any money, at least the ones that go to college to study art. The newspaper article listed the most expensive and least expensive "public" (owned or supported by the government) and "private" (not owned or supported by the government) universities in the United States for both tuition and room and board. "Tuition" is the price you pay to take classes. "Room and board" includes the money for where you live (room) and what you eat (board). The New York Times' calculations take the total price you would pay for college and then subtract the average amount of "scholarships and grants" (money given to you that is not a loan) students receive. So, for example, if the total price of going to Podunk University is $60,000, and the average student gets $40,000 in grants, the "net" price is $20,000.

Here are the five most expensive private colleges in the United States, along with the "net price" (total cost minus average scholarships and grants) per year:

School of the Art Institute of Chicago: $41,433

Rhode Island School of Design: $38,872

The New School (New York): $38,497

Art Center College of Design (California): $38,256

Ringling College of Art and Design: $37,222

You can see what four of the five schools have "in common" (ways they are alike): they're all universities "dedicated to" (devoted to; which specialize in) art and design. A student who attends one of these art colleges will pay more than nearly any other type of school, including world-famous universities like Harvard or Yale. But the reason isn't that schools like Harvard and Yale have cheaper tuition. It's because schools of art and design don't usually give very many scholarships or grants to students the way other universities do. Students in art schools have to take loans or get the money themselves, meaning of course they may have more "debt" (money one owes to someone else) when they graduate.