The Inflation Nobody's Prepared For #college #tuition

17 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, TJ Walker examines Yale University's published total cost for tuition, housing, and food for the 2026‑2027 academic year, which he states is $94,100. He notes that this represents a nominal increase of roughly 933% since 1980. After adjusting the 1980 price for inflation, the current sticker price is still about 2.6 times higher than the inflation‑adjusted historical cost. Walker argues that if Yale had simply indexed tuition to inflation, the cost would be around $35,600, far below the actual $94,100. He concludes that the perceived college affordability crisis is real, not a hallucination, and suggests that elite universities dislike hearing this reality.

Chapters

for 2026 to 2027, Yale's published total for tuition, housing, and food is $94,100. This is a nominal increase of about 933%. Even after adjusting for inflation, the current Yale sticker price is still about 2.6 times the inflation-adjusted 1980 price. If Yale had merely tracked inflation, the bill would be roughly $35,600, not $94,100. So no, people are not hallucinating an affordability crisis. They're reading a bill. And this is the part elite universities hate to hear. Ultimise.