Tuition is roughly half the story

Every brochure leads with tuition, because it is the cleanest number. The cost that actually lands on a family is total cost of attendance: tuition plus accommodation, food, local transport, health cover, books and equipment, and one flight home a year.

In most destinations the non-tuition half runs somewhere near the tuition itself. A course advertised at one figure routinely costs close to double over its life.