Hogwarts Tuition/Thoughts on Crooked noses: wasWeasley Family

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 72981

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "megalynn44" <megalynn44 at h...>
wrote:
> 
> > Me:
> > A private school that offers as much as Hogwarts, too me at 
> > least, must have a hefty tuition.
> > 
> U_P_D wrote:
> > 
> > My impression has always been that Hogwarts tuition is free, ...
> 
> 
> Now me:
> 
> It has always baffled me the amount of people in fandom that think 
> Hogwarts is free. Where in canon is this indicated? 

bboy_mn:
Where in canon do you see anything other than the vaguest subtle hint
that people do pay tuition. I seems like if it was a big deal, it
would have been mentioned. The 'hint' that most people fall back on is
 that Harry said he needed to be careful how much gold he took out of
his account because he had X (a certian) number of year of school to
go. This is from a 12 year old boy who has never had any money, and to
 my knowledge has never bother to ask the goblin about or count how
much money he actually has. Plus, being that young, and having Hagrid
help him the first time, he has no idea how much school is going to
cost him. But that doesn't necessarily imply that that money he was
saving was for tuition.

Alternatives-
Maybe the founders of the school combined their fortunes and gave the
school an endowment. If it was a very substantial endowment by the
economy of the day, and it was invested, then over a thousand years
even at a small fraction of a percent of interest, it would have
compounded into a small fortune even by todays standards.

Then on top of that endowment, alumni support the school by donations.
It's possible that the 12 Governors of the Board of Governors of
Hogwarts are probably the 12 largest donors to the school. Since the
school is run on their money, they should naturally have some say in
how the school is run. 

What are the actual expenses for the school? The biggest expenses are
food and staff. Elves work for free. Heat comes from magical fires or
from wood from the forest. The building is already there; it's made of
stone, so how much maintenance does it need. Plus, most maintenance
can be accomplished with magic. So where are the real expenses that
would require the need for tuition?

Although this is a long shot, in addition to the above, in may be
possible that the Hogwart staff, being very well respected and
knowledgable in their particular fields of magic, do research or
consult with wizarding companies and organizations to develop new
products and new spells, and the school and the teachers share the
consulting fees. 

Maybe Hogwart hires itself out as a convention center in the summer. I
could keep going, but the point is, if you put your mind to it, it's
not that hard to come up with ways for Hogwarts to be self-sustaining.


> 
> 
> Now! On to Crooked noses. ...edited..
> 
> ~Megalynn

I think the references to crooked noses is a stereotype. Witches
always have crooked noses in fairytales; well, all the bad ones do.
JKR is trying to use themes that we recognise and are familiar with.
She uses that a lot in here magical world; common mythology, the
intermix of magic and muggle world existing along side each other.
Example; The Ministry of Magic is not located in Never-Never Land or
Shangri-la, it's in downtown London. So in creating her magical world
she has really taken all the things we know and are comfortable with
and added her own little twist to them. By comparison, I found the
Hobbit very difficult to read because everything was so completely
foreign.

Just a thought.

bboy_mn