The proposal to spread yeshiva tuition payments over 50 years is simple and compelling: instead of cramming 15 years of heavy tuition payments into the most financially stressful stage of life, why not spread them out evenly over half a century? After all, we pay property taxes for public school our entire adult lives—whether or not we have kids in school—so why not apply the same logic to yeshiva tuition?
But let’s take a step back and think this through.
The person who came up with this plan is likely in the thick of tuition-paying years, probably with a brood of young children and an inbox full of monthly statements. Understandably, this parent sees a mountain of bills and wonders how they’ll possibly make it through. The solution, in theory, is to break the mountain into manageable hills—extend the payments into the distant future, past the seminary years, past the weddings, past the kollel support. Maybe even into retirement.
That’s where the theory starts to fall apart.
The truth is, life is built in financial stages, and each one brings its own challenges. Tuition may feel crushing now, but once your children get older, you’re not off the hook. Seminary, college, support for married children, wedding expenses — these aren’t optional. They’re the next wave of financial responsibility. If you’re still paying off nursery and kindergarten when your son is ready to marry, what are you supposed to do? Take out another loan? Sell your house?
And then there’s retirement. At some point, people stop earning. They live on savings, social security, and hopefully some investment income. Can we really expect a 70-year-old grandparent to still be paying off tuition bills for a child who’s already a parent himself?
Even if a family could theoretically budget for decades of payments, life doesn’t follow predictable financial trajectories. People lose jobs. Health crises arise. Divorces happen. Income dries up. The last thing anyone needs in those moments is a contract obligating them to keep paying off a tuition bond signed 30 years ago.
That’s not to say we don’t need bold thinking about tuition. We do. Desperately. Creative solutions, such as expanding communal scholarship funds, endowment-based tuition subsidies, or even realigning our educational models to operate more efficiently—these are all ideas worth exploring. And yes, the new federal tax credit for private school scholarships is a game-changer, but it won’t eliminate tuition altogether.
The frustration fueling this “50-year bond” idea is real and valid. But we need to solve the tuition crisis in a way that reflects the actual financial rhythms of a frum family — not just the pain of today’s bills. Mortgaging our future isn’t the answer.
Let’s focus on sustainable, communal solutions that don’t push the problem into the next generation — or into our own retirement. Because the only thing worse than struggling to pay tuition now is still paying for it when you’re walking grandchildren to cheder.
Signed,
A Realistic Bubby
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12 Responses
One of the things that got me shaking my head is when the original author wrote “that would be roughly $4,500 per year”. Multiply that by 5 to 7 kids and you’re already at $22,500 to $31,500- already and crushing amount for many Frum families.
A more practical (but still unrealistic) way to set up the payment streams would be to make the payments variable and line up the payments with the parent’s projected income (i.e. have lower payments in the beginning and end when they’re building their careers and in retirement).
But that would just make the payments much higher at the time that they have 5-7 kids (or more) in school.
As with so many topics on here that there doesn’t seem to be any solution to (or a solution that’ll work for everyone) we need to look to Hashem and daven.
The person who presented the original idea of spreading out the payments is the first person to present a financially sensical idea to this problem and the bubby who wrote this response is financially illiterate and should be ignored.
An alternate solution, albeit probably unpopular, would be for kids to pay their own bonds once they are old enough. This way each person pays just once, instead of parents paying for multiple children.
Bubby is 100% correct. Extending loans for longer is not a viable way to afford expensive stuff. Even mortgages should not lost more than 30 years.
Also. What happens if a person chooses to stop paying? It will be hard to get the money out of them, and a hillul hashem.
Nudnikit, it’s not enforceable, because a child can not consent to a loan. What happens when he grows up and says that he never wanted this education in the first place?
How about opening public schools in dense Jewish areas, where there will be rov yehudim where kids can learn to read and write at government expense and then learn Torah the rest of the day.
How bout we just change the way we educate our kids like getting a melamud among friends or having parents teach once a week and rotating for free
Or do it by block. We need to start thinking out of the box
“Seminary, college, support for married children, wedding expenses — these aren’t optional.”
Of course seminary is optional. So is support for married children — that why you sent them to college! And a wedding is just as much a valid kiddushin if you spend a third as much as is typical.
AAQ,
A great idea as long as you’re ok with boys & girls going to school together.
The leaders of our community really need to make a communal effort to lower the costs of living a Torah lifestyle the way they are doing this to solve the shidduch crisis. During COVID, when people were making backyard weddings, I was hoping this would lead to a trend. Everything that our community and its members typically spends money on needs to be analyzed for its relevance so that our lives become more finanically sustatainable.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and wanted to share two ideas that might help make tuition more fair for everyone.
First, we should consider a system where every family pays a certain percent of income per child—with a minimum of 2 percent per child and a maximum of 15 percent per family. That way, no one pays too little or way too much. Right now, some wealthy families are paying under 1 percent of their income, while middle-class families are paying close to 30 percent. That doesn’t seem fair. A clear percent-based system would make things more balanced and could help many more families afford to stay in our schools.
Second, in the past, Rabbonim would teach in schools for free as part of their contract. Maybe we can bring that idea back. Imagine if every Rav was required to teach even just one class a week—Torah would feel more connected across the whole community, and it could help reduce costs too. It’s something to consider if a new school opens or if boards are open to trying creative solutions.
Just some thoughts to think about as we try to build a stronger and more affordable Torah education for everyone.