What to Pay for College

The list price at dozens of colleges will pass $100,000 per year in the next few years. Already, those schools will cost you over $1 million in pre-tax income to pay for two kids over eight years. So when, if ever, does it make sense to pay that much for an undergraduate education?

Here, Ron walks parents through the four main reasons most people go to college, without ever articulating them out loud or weighing them against one another. He describes the three emotions that lead families astray and persuade them to spend more rather than less. Then, he tells the tale of how pricing got so complicated – and why people with eight-figure net worths often get six-figure discounts while lower-income families can’t afford many schools.

How Colleges Price Their Wares

For audiences that want to go deep on higher education as an industry, Ron begins with the two questions so many parents who are also business owners and executives ask first: Why does college cost so much, and is higher education a bubble that’s going to pop?

Then, he pulls back the curtain on the private-equity owned consulting firms operating behind the scenes, renting algorithms to nearly all schools that help them set the net prices most families pay. College, like so many industries, is now a data business as well as a software one. Coupons abound, though the schools don't call them that.

But the residential undergraduate education industry is also one that aims to push the emotional buttons of teenagers and their parents. Schools are often very bad at that, as Ron demonstrates. But sometimes, the institutions are brilliant. Increasingly, families need to be brilliant too in order to navigate the system. In this talk, Ron helps get them there.

Unspoiling Our Children

How do you talk to kids about money and what do you say when you do?

All too many children grow up in households where parents shush them when they ask questions about money. But there’s a direct connection between talking about money and teaching all of the values that so many of us hold dear – patience, modesty, generosity and perspective.

Here Ron uses allowance as a practical framework – not just for saving, spending and giving but as a portal to years-long family conversations about how to be in the world and what your family stands for. He offers up general principles that will change the way you parent and offer a blueprint for thinking about how you and your kids navigate clothing, phones, cars, college and charity.