Planet School Economics
We are reimagining the private education business model to attract the best students and create a robustly authentic curriculum.
Why Tuition-Free?
Pretend for a moment that the United States has a population of just 1,000 teenagers. Now, your goal is to recruit the most visionary students from this group to be part of a school that reshapes education. But before you get to meet any of these 1,000 teens, someone kicks 980 of them out of the room and you only get to pitch your school to the 20 teens left.
That “someone” is tuition. 98% of households in America cannot afford private school tuition and our research shows that, as a result, those families don’t even consider private schools as a pathway no matter how generous a school’s financial aid policy might be. They don’t even apply. And why would they? Charging $56,000/year in tuition sends a pretty clear message about target audience.
We’re looking for teens who want spend their lives doing world-changing work. We don’t believe that trait has anything to do with parental income. If we are going to find those students, we need to be speaking to every teen with a compelling vision for their own future, the future of their community, and the future of planet Earth. Not just the 2% with rich parents.
In the long run, we believe building our school this way gives us a structural competitive advantage over every tuition-based private school in existence. Our applicant pool will be stronger, our income streams will be more robust, and our ability to recruit and retain the best faculty will be unmatched.
Tuition-Free Advantages
We want the most visionary students on Earth.
Charging tuition is counter-productive to creating a student body of the most visionary students. Exorbitant tuition fees discourage applications from students who cannot afford to enroll without financial aid. We want any motivated teen to see themselves as a potential Planet School student, so we don’t even ask about income—it’s not a factor. We started by looking at how we could assemble the best students and our research showed that making incremental changes to the tuition/financial aid model would be ineffective—the data is overwhelming that tuition fees shrink applicant pools. If our North Star is attracting exceptional students, we needed to scrap tuition and start from scratch with a new business model. Therefore, while we view it as an immensely noble pursuit to bring a world-class private education to students across the socio-economic spectrum, the decision to not charge tuition is strategically driven.
The high cost of education is a social ill.
We believe in meritocracy and rewarding students for their ideas, their hard work, and their accomplishments, not the accomplishments of their parents. While it is true that many elite schools derive their exclusive appeal from the wealth of their student families, trading exorbitant tuition for institutional prestige is a Faustian bargain we decline to make. We believe that the projects Planet School students complete and share with the public will speak for themselves.
“Wow, high school students did this?! I want to go to that school.”
This will very quickly eclipse any “exclusivity value” we might have accrued from charging $56,000/year, the average tuition cost of the top 50 private high schools in America in 2024.
Our admissions process is more rigorous.
Planet School students do transformative work that contributes to cutting edge research, informs policy decisions, builds businesses, and develops neighborhoods. For work of such rigor and purpose, we would be remiss to assemble a Planet School student body from just the 2% of American households that can afford private school tuition.
Curriculum authenticity is enhanced.
Authentic projects, no busy work: everything Planet School students work on is real. Students are involved in every aspect of the Planet School, including the stewardship of the school’s fiscal health and management of our business portfolio. Inviting students to sit at the table to participate in this meaningful work imbues the entire curriculum with authenticity. Students are not doing work to get a grade, they’re doing work to change the world and build a legacy.
Financial aid does not reach students at scale.
While most private schools have financial aid programs to enable enrollment by students without the economic means to afford tuition, these are insufficient. Students from families making less than $100,000 make up less than 10% of the private schools we studied despite 63% of American families making less than $100,000. Even if tuition-based schools wanted to give more generously, their business model constrains them from going above a ceiling of about 40% of their student body receiving aid. When schools approach this threshold (or lower, depending on endowment size), aid has to get scaled back, a phenomenon that has happened repeatedly. Read more about our research on the role of tuition in shaping enrollment.
Tuition and charitable giving are brittle revenue strategies.
Due to snafus in the 2023-2024 rollout of the new FAFSA form, it has been widely reported that many public and private universities are facing serious budget problems and contemplating layoffs and program cuts because they did not receive the tuition (and federal aid) that they rely on. Tuition is a monocropped business model where a slight change in expected conditions can have devastating consequences; a single season of slightly depressed enrollment has revealed this model’s fragility. We also saw charitable giving dry up during the the 2008 Great Recession, also leading to massive program cuts.
Planet School Business Model
The Planet School is building a portfolio of businesses (and projects) that operate independently of the school while providing real-world curricular opportunities to students. Business profit is allocated to Planet School operations or added to the Planet School endowment.
Current portfolio:
How It Works
These guiding principles will be evident throughout The Planet School business portfolio.
Established Business Models
Our business portfolio will not rely on overly disruptive business concepts—we leave that to our curriculum. For our first 5-7 years of operations, we are building time-tested businesses that leverage our major campus assets. Boat tours, accommodations, and retail are our first collection of revenue strategies. You can read more about each of these below.
Donations and Giving
We also plan to pursue tax-deductible private donations, grant funding, and foundation giving as part of our diverse revenue strategy. Indeed, we believe both our curriculum and our business model make us highly fundable. We are reaching students other private schools cannot and we are creating cutting edge pedagogy in STEM, experiential education, climate and ocean science, and social/emotional learning. You can donate here.
Zero Student Labor
We do not assume student labor in our financial models at all. Students will be involved in the founding, managing, and operating of our businesses strictly for curricular benefit. We have found that students creating work for public consumption enhances project authenticity, so our businesses allow for students to engage in real-world problems. But our businesses are operated by professional staff.
Masters and Apprentices
Our business operations mean that we will be bringing experts in their field to come work with us: ocean researchers, entrepreneurs, craftsmen, farmers, mariners, and many more. Students will have the opportunity to learn alongside these individuals in addition to their teachers, creating a learning opportunity that other schools structurally cannot match.
Strong Financial Foundations
The Planet School is not yet operating as a full-time high school and we will not open our school until our businesses have solidly established themselves. We view the tuition model as risky: look at the financial strain that resulted from colleges not receiving the federal aid that they rely on to subsidize their exorbitant tuition fees. The Planet School’s revenue streams will be diversified.
For-Profit and Non-Profit
Our business ventures are operated as for-profit entities with their own brand identity. Our long term intention is to operate these entities as B Corps since their profits are directed into the Planet School Education Fund, which was awarded 501(c)(3) status in August 2025.