Everyone knows a college education comes at a price. But the exact figures might be shocking. So, before you begin your application process, consider switching to cost-effective solutions. For instance, opt for a cheap essay writing service and take advantage of any free online resources. Be prepared to prioritise your school fees to get the quality education you deserve.

Last week, we told you that Hilton College’s annual school fees have now hit a cool R300 000 a year.

Look, you get plenty of bang for your buck (a nature reserve, a personal tutor and an individual academic plan, amongst other things), but it’s a select few who can fork out that kind of money for a full five years.

Over and across the pond in the UK, Eton College regularly features on various ‘most expensive school’ lists, so we thought we would do a little comparison with SA’s top dog.

As mentioned, Hilton comes out at R300 000, and we’ll find Eton’s details on their ‘School Fees‘ page.

First up, just to milk every last penny, there are the preliminary fees:

Michaelmas is one of the terms, confusingly called halves even though there are three of them, in case you were wondering.

Once you’ve paid those fees, it’s on to the real whopper:

Yeah, that’s a cool basic fee of £40 668 in 2018–19 (three payments of £13 556). Worked out at the current exchange rate of R17,90 to the pound, that’s around R728 000.

Per year.

Fond of music, perchance? Pay more:

To be fair, the school does boast a mightily impressive list of Old Etonians, including Karl Marx, George Orwell, David Cameron, Boris Johnson (hmm, not that impressive), Ian Fleming and Bear Grylls.

Nice to see Bear remains grounded after such an elite upbringing.

When you consider just how large a role a private school education can play in climbing the ladder, maybe those exorbitant prices pay off in the long run.

Consider this from the Guardian:

The proportion of prominent people in every area who have been educated privately is striking, in some cases grotesque. From judges (74% privately educated) through to MPs (32%), the numbers tell us of a society where bought educational privilege also buys lifetime privilege and influence.

“The dogged persistence of the British ‘old boy”’ is how a 2017 study describes the traditional dominance of private-school alumni in British society. This reveals the fruits of exploring well over a century of biographical data in Who’s Who, that indispensable annual guide to the composition of the British elite.

For those born between the 1830s and 1920s, roughly 50-60% went to private schools; for those born between the 1930s and 1960s, the proportion was roughly 45-50%. Among the new entrants to Who’s Who in the 21st century, the proportion of the privately educated has remained constant at around 45%. Going to one of the schools in the prestigious Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) still gives a 35 times better chance of entering Who’s Who than if one has not attended an HMC school; while those attending the historic crème de la crème, the so-called Clarendon Schools (Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’, Rugby, St Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Winchester), are 94 times more likely to join the elite than any ordinary British-educated person.

Even if one’s child never achieves celebrity, sending him or her to a private school is usually a shrewd investment – indeed, increasingly so, to judge by the relevant longitudinal studies of two different generations. Take first the cohort born in 1958: in terms of those with comparable social backgrounds, demographic characteristics and early tested skills, and different only in what type of school they attended when they were 11, by the time they were in their early 30s (around 1990) the privately educated were earning 7% more than the state-educated. Compare that with those born in 1970: by the same stage (the early 2000s), the gap between the two categories – again, similar in all other respects – had risen to 21% in favour of the privately educated.

You can’t put a price on plugging straight into a network that instantly affords you access to some of the country’s most powerful players.

Perhaps that’s why Hilton can charge R300 000 a year, without parents skipping a beat.

[sources:eton&guardian]