Why Work, When You Can Learn?

In the previous post that touches on this subject, we questioned:

Imagine paying $40,000 in post-tax money in tuition for four kids a year, while discovering that another family with four kids is paying $16,000? That's the equivalent of earning $40,000+ more a year (pre-tax), for the same utility.

When one considers this, it is easy to understand how schools - consciously or not - would be resistent to transparency. Not only would there be a lot of animosity created or suspicions confirmed, but it would reinforce that the educational system's subtle push for kollel in many places is creating a huge drain on the community as a whole.

While that estimate was imaginary, it's apparently quite accurate. On Orthonomics:

I was called to my son’s cheder to talk about tuition. I was directed to the administrator, who informed me that he would be raising my tuition since, in his words, “You are working in Manhattan and making a nice salary.” (I’m already paying more than most people, as they won’t give me breaks because I’m not learning.)

... We started discussing the matter and he told me that his salary is $25,000, and that the yeshiva works out his payments so that he is still eligible for government funding. I then explained to him that he makes a lot more than I do.

Read it all there. Note that with all these calculations factored in, the principal has the higher salary - and then the working man pays (taxes and?) tuition. And this is a principal; a kollel man comes out rather close:

This particular individual is an administrator, but in the event that he was learning full-time and only receiving a kollel check ($4,160) and a night kollel check ($3,000), he would still be making more than $38,000, which is not much less than my $41,200.