For the record, I’m not American nor live in the US, but I have a 19-year-old son who started attending the University of Chicago this year, studying economics. Just the tuition itself is $70k. My husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it - I still believe it’s an outrageous amount of money to attend college.
This is a private school so they don’t get much in the way of direct government funding. State-funded schools are considerably cheaper. I went to Wright State University in Ohio. Right now it’s about $13k/yr in tuition. This is still rather expensive on a global scale.
Why do private schools charge that much? Because people (like you) will pay that much. What about the University of Chicago makes it so that you are willing pay for it? What do you or your son hope to get out of it that a school in your home country (I’m assuming Canada) can’t give him? To compare to Wright State, even for out-of-country students the tuition is less than half of Chicago’s tuition. Is the benefit of going to Chicago worth that much more? If it is, then that is exactly what you’re paying for.