Education
Education is a pipeline with two visible ends. At the input, school-age children either find a seat at a high school or they age out as unschooled. Unschooled adults earn the minimum wage for the rest of their working lives, because the labor market keeps treating them as low-skill.
At the output, high school graduates roll against the university acceptance rate. Those who get in and finish enter the city’s pool of college-educated workers, the people who fill specialist jobs like engineer, doctor, lawyer, and teacher. Education-themed buildings in the area can raise the acceptance rate above its baseline.
Every enrolled student costs the city a fixed amount per month, on top of the teacher and professor salaries listed on this page. Half-full classrooms are a budget hole twice over. You pay the per-student operating cost only on actual heads, but the salaried staff are billed in full whether the seats are full or not. Build deliberately. Too few schools and the next generation joins the unschooled cluster. Too many and you are paying salaries without producing any new taxable workers.
Your levers
- Construction. Each high school and university opens a fixed number of seats.
- Staffing. Teachers and professors are hired from your pool of qualified adults.
- Patience. Children who age past school age without a seat never go back. Under-building schools during a population boom locks in a low-skilled cohort for decades.
Parameters
Citizens with bachelors degree or higher
0.44
Percentage of working-age adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher. This is the ratio of immigrants who hold a bachelor’s degree and the ratio of high school graduates who go on to college when all the educational infrastructure is available in the city.
Source: NYC Future
University acceptance rate
0.63
Probability that a high school graduate enrolls in university. In October 2024, 62.8% of high school graduates ages 16-24 were enrolled in college.
Source: BLS — College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates, 2024
High school student monthly costs
Itemized monthly cost of educating one public high-school student, excluding teacher salaries (billed separately per teacher). Each line is one expenditure function; the city is charged the sum per enrolled student each month. Total ≈ $679/student/month.
| Key | Value (money) |
|---|---|
| Learning materials | $110 |
| Infrastructure upkeep | $132 |
| Administration | $104 |
| Pupil support | $167 |
| Transportation | $56 |
| Food services | $51 |
| Enterprise and other | $59 |
Teacher monthly
$5,500
The monthly salary paid to each teacher. This amount is deducted from the city’s education budget.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Professor monthly
$10,000
The monthly salary paid to each university professor. Derived from NCES instruction expenditure per FTE ($14,049/yr) scaled to 500 students / 60 faculty.