Paying for Hogwarts

[cressida_tt]

No: HPFGUIDX 104094

Alora <chrisnlorrie at y...> wrote:
> Does one pay for Hogwarts?  Yes, Harry has a small 
> fortune in gold in Gringotts, but we never see or hear 
> how Hagrid/Harry pays tuition to go to Hogwarts.  I 
> thought about the Weasleys, and how many books, parchments, 
> quills, robes etc that they need, and how much that 
> must cost.  Add to that actual tuition and it must cost 
> a small fortune! How does a poorer family make it?


In all of the other popular boarding school sagas,such as those by 
Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton (these featured heavily in my own 
childhood reading), the children featured were from wealthy families 
who had both a boarding school tradition and also could evidently 
afford the fees. This patently is not the case for all the Hogwarts 
pupils. 

I actually assumed on first reading the books that JK Rowling had not 
really thought that anyone would ask about the origin of school fees, 
as the majority of her readership would be juveniles!

In the increasingly popular private sector of the British education 
system, school fees are generally met by the parents (sadly). There 
are however a number of other options. 

There are always scholarship endowments from various sources 
including wealthy alumni, of whom I should imagine that there are 
many ex-Hogwarts. Local authorities often endow private schools in 
order to educate gifted students, so perhaps the Ministry of Magic in 
this capacity endows Hogwarts with money.

If Hogwarts is the only secondary school available for magical 
students then perhaps the Ministry of Magic in lieu of the local 
authority merely meets all the fees anyway.

Hogwarts as a very old school would have endowments stretching back 
over the years and could possibly be an enormously wealthy 
establishment in its own right. One would assume that in JK Rowlings 
world there would not be the pressure on private schools to maintain 
their charitable status and therefore they would be able to earn 
money at will from their investments.

I feel that given the longevity of Hogwarts, the expense for a few 
teachers salaries and school dinners would probably not be an issue, 
given of course that the staff of house elves are unpaid slaves!

Cressida