The High Price of Preschool: Is It Worth It

How much are you willing to invest in your child’s early education?

At just 48 hours old, baby Blue Ivy Carter sent the media into a frenzy. The newborn rock star is already the youngest person ever with a song on the Billboard charts, and with celebrity parents Jay-Z and Beyoncé, this baby girl’s world is inevitability handed to her on a multi-million dollar platter. Only the best of the best will do.

Fast forward four years from now: The Carters will be selecting which “exclusive” preschool baby Blue will attend (if they haven’t started already).

You may be thinking: it is too early to start hypothetically planning B.I.C’s education.

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Fact is celebrity or not, many parents start planning their children’s educations at conception. And when the child is born, parents go through great lengths to get a jumpstart— not just planning for the long haul of college, but investing just as much time, and money, into finding that perfect preschool to teach their kids the valuable fundamentals of life — abcs, 1,2,3s, building blocks, etc.

Many parents view private preschool as a necessary step in the even more stressful process of securing a place in a private grade school, high school or college. But, do the stresses on parents to providing a good education for their children strip them of just being kids? Does too much academia mean less playtime?

Though there still is playtime and naptime, toddlers attending these schools also spend part of the day learning Spanish and French and playing the violin. Of course, these are private preschools. And at private preschools you get top-notch facilities equipped with libraries, computers and foreign language classes. 

Parents are willing to pay a hefty price to provide the best education their pockets can, or cannot, afford.  There is something to be said for a hefty investment in early childhood education: You get what you pay for.

How much is hefty? According to Forbes, sending your child to an exclusive preschool will set you back more than 25 grand a year. That’s higher than most accredited four-year universities.