The piggy bank that grew as the cube of the tuition

Dark college-savings-deck-style infographic titled “The piggy bank you’ll need”, masthead “Milestone & Mortarboard · The College Savings Outlook · 2026 edition”, showing four glossy piggy banks on a shelf, each scaled uniformly in height, width and depth to its sector’s average published tuition and fees for 2025–26: a tiny teal community-college bank at $4,150 (teased in italics as “the coin jar”), a small green public in-state bank at $11,950, a large slate public out-of-state bank at $31,880, and a towering gold private nonprofit bank at $45,000, crowned “the vault”. A gold badge reads “A private year is a vault. A community-college year, a coin jar.”, the kicker urges “The gap only grows while you wait. Match the bank before the bank outgrows you — start yesterday.”, and a footnote quietly concedes that each bank is “drawn to scale in all three dimensions — height, width and depth”, crediting College Board’s Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025. Every price is printed honestly beneath its bank; the banks’ implied volumes, not the numbers, do the exaggerating. — Showing the misleading chart

The same four prices on a light background as horizontal bars on a zero-based 0–50k axis, kicked “The same four stickers · with length doing the talking” and titled “Private costs 3.8× the state school — not 53×”: community college $4,150 in teal, public in-state $11,950 in green, public out-of-state $31,880 in slate and private nonprofit $45,000 in gold, annotated in red “the deck’s bank held ≈53× the state school’s savings, not 3.8×”. A card headed “Length is honest; volume isn’t” explains that scaling a bank’s height, width and depth at once grows the solid as the cube (3.8³ ≈ 53×, and ≈1,275× against the community college’s 10.8×), that even the flat ink grows as the square (≈14×), and that a volume-true redraw leaves the private bank just ∛3.8 ≈ 1.6× as tall — with the two honest-sized piggy banks drawn beside it. A second card, “The sticker isn’t the bill”, notes that among first-time full-time students the average net tuition and fees are about $2,300 at public four-year in-state colleges (down from a $4,450 peak in 2012–13, in 2025 dollars) and $16,910 at private nonprofits (down from $19,810 in 2006–07), that community-college grant aid has covered tuition since 2009–10, and that the honest net ratio is 7.4× — larger than the sticker’s, on far smaller numbers. A footnote credits College Board’s Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025 and says both charts are our own demonstration. — Showing the misleading chart

Be the first to star this exhibit

A college-savings deck draws one year of tuition in each sector as a piggy bank scaled uniformly in height, width and depth — so a private college’s real 3.8× sticker gap over the average state school swells into a bank holding about 53 times the savings, and 1,275 times the community college’s. Drawn as bars, the gaps return to what the labels say — and the stickers aren’t even the bill: net of grant aid, first-year in-state students at public four-years pay about $2,300, and community-college grant aid has covered tuition since 2009–10.

College Board, “Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025” (Ma, Pender & Hu) — Table CP-1, average published (sticker) tuition and fees by sector, 2025-26; estimated net tuition and fees for first-time full-time students from Figures CP-8, CP-9 and CP-10, 2025Added August 2, 2026

01The claim

A private year is a vault; a community-college year, a coin jar. Set the four banks side by side and the choice stares down at you from three storeys up — the gap only grows while you wait, so match the bank before the bank outgrows you, and start saving yesterday.

02The trick

Every price on the shelf is the College Board’s, printed honestly beneath its bank — $4,150 for a year at the average community college, $11,950 at a public four-year in-state, $31,880 out-of-state, $45,000 at a private nonprofit — and the deck’s own footnote confesses the method: each piggy bank is “drawn to scale in all three dimensions.” That confession is the crime. Our coffee-cup almanac and hydrogen balloon scale an icon’s height and width to the value, so the ink grows as the square and a 2.9× gap reads as 8×; the piggy bank goes one dimension further. A rendered solid is judged by what it could hold, and volume grows as the cube of the scale: the private bank, drawn 3.8 times taller than the state school’s, is also 3.8 times wider and 3.8 times deeper, a vessel holding 3.8³ ≈ 53 times the savings for 3.8 times the tuition. Against the community college the cube runs away completely — 10.8 times the price becomes a bank with roughly 1,275 times the capacity, which is how an option that costs about a tenth as much gets drawn as a rounding error at the vault’s feet. Even measured as flat ink on the page the gap has already been squared to ≈14×; the third dimension compounds it to 53. The taxonomy’s arithmetic is exactly this: double a value and a height-scaled icon looks quadrupled — and in 3D, octupled. (This exhibit is our own demonstration in the house style of a college-savings marketing deck, drawn from the College Board’s published tables rather than from any real firm’s brochure.)

03The fix

Give each price one dimension and the shelf tells the truth: as plain bars on a zero-based axis, private is 3.8× the state school, not a vault over a coin jar; leaving your state roughly triples the public sticker (2.7×); and the community college undercuts the private sticker by 10.8×, an honestly enormous gap that never needed inflating. If the piggy-bank metaphor is worth keeping, scale its volume to the value and the private bank stands just ∛3.8 ≈ 1.6 times as tall as the state school’s (2.2× the community college’s) — still visibly bigger, now truthfully so. Then comes the caveat the deck buried: the sticker isn’t the bill. Among first-time full-time students, average net tuition and fees — what’s actually paid once grant aid lands — run about $2,300 at public four-year in-state colleges, down in real terms from a $4,450 peak in 2012–13, and $16,910 at private nonprofits, down from $19,810 in 2006–07; at community colleges, grant aid has covered the average tuition bill entirely since 2009–10. The ironies stack: the net gap between private and public, 7.4×, is proportionally larger than the sticker gap the deck felt it had to cube — and the sticker story itself was already real, with public four-year prices doubling in inflation-adjusted terms since 1995–96 ($5,940 to $11,950 in 2025 dollars). A savings pitch survives honest drawing just fine. The tell generalizes to every rendered object on a chart — cups, barrels, piggy banks, planets: check the printed ratio against how big the shapes feel, and ask which dimension the designer scaled. Height alone squares the lie; a solid you could fill cubes it.