Tuition Dilemma

By suggesting that the rich should pay their college bills in full, or, in effect, that they should pay the fare not only for themselves but also for professors, janitors, paupers and everybody else on the intellectual streetcar, Professor Harris has highlighted one of the crucial paradoxes of modern higher education: that while a college degree is worth far more than it costs to produce, college tuition rates now do not even cover the cost of production.

It is anachronistic that today, when a Harvard education is a more valuable investment than ever, the teachers who provide the product are worse of financially than ever before. Similarly, it seems strange for the College to be subsidizing the education of a well-to-do "C" student by some $900, while an insolvent "C" student may not even get a scholarship.

The problem shows all signs of getting worse. Colleges today are either sinking further and further into debt, reducing the quality of their product to balance their spiralling budgets, or combining the worst features of both vices. Endowment annually pays a smaller portion of the bill, and simultaneously, more and more students apply to college who cannot pay the balance themselves.

Professor Harris has suggested that people today want a good college education more than ever before, and that they must and will pay to get it. If he is right, higher tuitions are both inevitable and desirable, but several crucial questions must first be answered before coming to such an unqualified conclusion.

In the first place, education is a competitive industry, and many families may not be willing to pay more money for a higher quality product. If all Ivy Leagues colleges raised their tuition collaterally, part of this problem in selling the best would be eliminated, for many families already regard the Ivy League as the only place their children can get a first rate education. But many others do not, and it seems inevitable that a substantial tuition hike will throw the balance even more heavily in favor of State U. for the student from the provinces, still unconvinced by accolades in Holiday.

Such a rise moreover would not have an entirely beneficial effect on the middle class pocketbook. Lower-middle class families are already resigned to making sacrifices and can also obtain scholarships; upper class families can absorb an additional bill without losing more than a few coupons. But the two-car family which has peculiar demands upon its savings gets caught in the pinch which has already hit the slightly less prosperous family. Unless both the scale and theory of scholarship aid are revised, financial aid officers are likely to continue looking askance at pleas from the so-called middle-middles, suggesting that they could sell the electric dishwasher or forgo the long summer vacation. But these things have become a part of their way of life. Whether it is necessary and justified to tell them that they will have to choose one or the other remains problematical.

But while the disadvantages of higher tuitions are clear, the College's need for a higher income is equally obvious. If the University feels that tuition can go no higher without seriously restricting the nature of its student body or without placing undue pressure on one segment of society then they must initiate some other program for raising money from alumni, industry, or government. To date, there have been a few dramatic moves in this direction, but not enough to attract the immense sums now needed.