---
created_at: '2015-12-20T20:45:38.000Z'
title: The $10,000-a-year college education has arrived (1981)
url: http://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/19/nyregion/the-10000-a-year-college-education-has-arrived.html
author: Futurebot
points: 98
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 145
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1450644338
_tags:
- story
- author_Futurebot
- story_10768239
objectID: '10768239'

---
Correction Appended

Correction Appended

The price of a college education, which hard-pressed parents have long
said is going through the roof, has done just that - only there is
apparently no longer a roof. As Gertrude Stein said, ''When you get
there, there is no there there.''

For 1981-82 undergraduates, tuition charges alone are crashing through
the $7,000 barrier for the first time. Total fees, including room and
board, are not only shooting past $10,000, but also emerging strong on
the other side at such pace-setting schools as Harvard, Yale, Brown,
Bennington, Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Stanford.

At several campuses, they carry such canny price tags as Princeton's
$9,994. Outstripping the inflation rate by several points, the increases
will commonly be 15 percent and often more. A benchmark 20 percent rise
has been announced by Boston's Northeastern University for four of its
colleges, where freshmen will pay $4,500 tuition, with a 16.7 percent
rise to $4,200 at the other colleges. Cornell's endowed colleges will go
up 18 percent to $7,000 tuition, with housing and dining increases
expected to bring the total to $9,864. Student Aid a Concern

The increases come at a time of severe concern over the Reagan
Administration's announced goal of limiting Federal financial aid to
students, and many schools are increasing their own budgets for student
aid. ''I have never been so beside myself about financial aid, both at
Barnard and across the country,'' said Suzanne Guard, the Barnard
director of financial aid.

At Amherst College, which expects a 13 to 15 percent increase above the
present $8,450 comprehensive fee (compared with $3,600 ten years ago),
70 percent of the students have federally guaranteed student loans. The
college has budgeted its own financial help for 35 percent of next
year's freshmen, as against 27 percent this year.

''If there's no major reduction in Government loans and grants, we're in
good shape,'' said Donald Routh, dean for financial aid. ''If there are
reductions, then we have some very realproblems.''

Around the country, campus press editorials and a scattering of
demonstrations have protested the proposed rises in tuition and other
fees. While some officials and students talk about ''pricing ourselves
out of the market'' or ''getting beyond what the traffic will bear,''
for the most part they report a mood of near resignation to what is
considered inevitable. Some Students Protest

At Fordham University, which has announced 13 and 14 percent increases
in tuition, a demonstration was held recently on the Bronx campus, where
total fees will go from $3,750 to $4,240. Seven students carried signs
and chanted in the cold for 15 minutes before jamming their signs in the
door of the administration building and dispersing.

Students at New York University were described as ''complaining'' about
increases of 14 percent for tuition, to $5,770, and 12 percent for
living costs, but they were said to be more immediately concerned about
possible cuts in Federal aid. Housing at N.Y.U. will go to $1,430 and
the maximum meal plan charge to $1,384.

Putting the blame on inflation, college officials cite soaring costs of
fuel and insulation programs, food and equipment, as well as relatively
modest faculty and staff salary increases of 9 to 13 percent.
Administrators note in passing that income from endowments and other
sources is not keeping pace with inflation.

Announcing that Yale's undergraduate bill would be $10,340, President A.
Bartlett Giamatti called it ''as low as it can possibly be'' in the face
of energy costs, a decline in the purchasing power of endowments and
Yale's decision to increase salaries.

Columbia and Barnard, which expect to announce increases of at least 12
percent, to about $10,300 and $8,840, respectively, are among the
schools citing a need for improved security to justify the rises. State
University Fees Up

Tuition increases of at least 11 percent at the State University of New
York - to $1,000 or $1,050 for undergraduates on 29 four-year campuses,
compared with $550 a decade ago - were tentatively approved this month
in an attempt to save most of the 440 faculty and nonfaculty positions
believed lost in Governor Carey's proposed 1981-82 budget. The trustees
also raised next year's dormitory fees by $150 a year, to $1,100.

The breaching of both $1,000 levels, while psychologically dramatic in
the state-supported system, still leaves the state university's 10-year
increase slightly below the now typical 100 percent rate.

Although the City University of New York is also heavily dependent on
the state budget, it plans to remain at the $900 mark, reached four
years after its schools began charging for tuition in 1976. ''We have
absolutely no intention of increasing the tuition for next year,'' said
James P. Murphy, chairman of the board of trustees.

Total fees on nearly all campuses have at least doubled in the past
decade - a period when the national consumer price index was rising 112
percent - and most picked up speed in the later years. At Brown
University, for example, next year's $10,242 comprehensive fee is up 110
percent from $4,890 in 1970-71 and 78 percent from $5,750 in 1975.

Princeton will break its own records with a 15 percent increase in
tuition to $7,250. The total charges come to $9,994 -a 133 percent
increase in the last decade. However, students and their families are
urged to count also on an allowance of $1,055 (up from this year's $975
estimate) for such expenses as books and laundry -not to mention the
beer-and-skittles part of education - bringing the recognized total to
$11,049. Bennington at High End

With a mere 12.3 percent rise in total fees, Bennington College in
Vermont may still present the nation's most expensive undergraduate
bill: $10,560 for tuition, room and board. At Wesleyan University in
Middletown, Conn., a planned 15 percent increase will bring student fees
to $9,780, of which $6,850 is for tuition.

Like many other schools, Harvard University cited ''steady inflation and
rising energy costs'' for its $1,370 increase in undergraduate charges
to $10,540, with tuition alone up 15.5 percent to $6,930. Henry
Rosovsky, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said an 80 percent
rise in the price of steam for heat and hot water had contributed to
Harvard's current annual energy bill of $27 million, up 25 percent in a
year.

Like other schools, too, Harvard maintains that ''families will still
allocate about the same percentage of income in real dollars'' because
college charges have only paralleled the inflation in the nation's
disposable personal income.

Many students and parents, however, note that money intended for college
does not always come out of current income. When Deborah Levinger, a
Brandeis University freshman from Sioux City, Iowa., started planning
and saving for college five years ago, for example, she thought the
money earmarked would last her through graduate school, with ''maybe a
little left over.''

''But now, by the time I get to grad school, I won't have any money at
all,'' said Miss Levinger, whose 1981-82 tuition, board and room will be
$9,824, compared with this year's $8,574. ''The cost is outrageous, but
what can I do? Other schools I've looked at are in about the same
range.''

Illustrations: photo of students on Yale campus photo of Suzanne Guard
and Mel O'Connor at Barnard table comparing tuition at ten colleges
