Education: The Campus Value Line

In thousands of U.S. families, the pride of sending a youngster to college is being tempered by the chilly reality of rising costs. Last week the College Board, a research and service organization, reported that the price for four-year public schools has jumped 8% over last year, to an average of $5,314; for private institutions 7%, to $9,659. These figures, for students living on campus, include tuition, books and supplies, housing, transportation and incidentals, and climax a decade in which the rates for higher education have more than doubled. The really bad news is that they are currently rising at twice the 1985 inflation index of 3.7%.

As prices climb faster than ivy, the leaders, not surprisingly, are the prestigious private schools. Tiny (550 students) Bennington College in Vermont and science giant (4,300 undergraduates) M.I.T. are the costliest. Their tabs, says the College Board: just over $17,000. And the schools believe they are worth it. "We offer extraordinary facilities, extraordinary faculty, extraordinary peers and the best talent available," says M.I.T. Admissions Director Michael Behnke. There is another factor too. "You are paying for prestige," says William Park, professor of English at Sarah Lawrence ($16,285) and a graduate of Princeton ($16,790).

Beyond such self-assured notions, officials feel justified in pushing up prices. During the mid- to late 1970s, when inflation was at times hitting double digits, colleges battled to hold their cost lines. Faculty salaries lost 20% of their purchasing power. New construction and debt service were deferred, while energy and maintenance costs skyrocketed. Now the bills are coming due. Faculties, for example, are getting catch-up raises averaging 7.2% across the nation.

It is also true that schools sense a certain license in their pricing. "To a large degree, colleges have set then costs according to what they think the market will bear," says Henry Levin, education and economics professor at Stanford, where the market is bearing up brilliantly. Despite a 60% jump since 1980, to an estimated $16,193, Stanford this year had 17,652 applicants for 2,506 freshman openings. But there is a sharp edge to the situation, and in Levin's case it has cut close to home. On his salary of more than $60,000, Levin finds he cannot afford to send his own five children to Stanford, even with a 50% tuition discount. And like those of a lot of other middle-class parents, Levin's income is a little too high for his children to qualify for most federal or state aid programs.

Such aid is in somewhat shorter supply. The U.S. Government, which provides about $15 billion in student help, has begun to back off. Since 1981, allowing for inflation, total federal college-student support has dropped about 10%. One result is that some minority students are steering away from the elite colleges. Princeton, for example, is seeing a falloff in black enrollments, from 345 in 1980 to an estimated 316 this year, a trend that may be spreading to other select colleges. "With grant money frozen and tuitions going up," says Reginald Wilson of the American Council on Education in Washington, "black students have to pay more college costs out of their own pockets. Many now just can't afford to go."