Mounting Inflation Means That Tuition May Be Hiked Again

When undergraduates opened their term bills after registration last week, they found that a semester of Harvard's tuition, room, and board now costs more than $2000. The added burden on students at Harvard typifies the financial picture at many universities, some of which are facing serious financial crises.

Yale has ordered a freeze on hiring new faculty members and Columbia had an $11 million deficit last year.

The Harvard financial picture, in comparison at least, is much brighter. In the fiscal year ending June 1969, the Arts and Sciences Faculty, which teaches two-thirds of the University's students, had a $960,000 deficit. Although Dean Dunlop refuses to release figures for the past year until his October 20 "Budget Message" to the Faculty, his October 20 "Budget Message" to the Faculty, his office did say that the past year's deficit is considerably under $800,000.

Dunlop explained that the problem is more complicated than simply recent cutbacks in government funding. Federal funds still pay for roughly 35 per cent of University expenditures. Dunlop pointed out that "one of the very large elements of the problem is continuing inflation. If you're going to have costs rising seven, eight, and nine per cent a year, raising money for this is very difficult."

Respite

J. Humphrey Doermann '47, Assistant to Dean Dunlop, said, "Our financial problems are similar in kind to other universities' but we have a year or two more of insulation before our problems hit in full force," He said that Arts and Sciences deficits are paid for by a small account kept at $500,000, and a larger account, the Fund for Instruction, which is currently over $8 million. The Fund was built up in the early 1960's when there were budget surpluses.

If these two sources ran dry, Doermann said, the Arts and Sciences Faculty would have to use the principal of its endowment, which now yields more than $2 million annually in interest.

And Again

Doermann also stated that he expected College tuition to rise again next year, above the current $2600, to keep pace with further inflation.

Two sections of the Faculty are being particularly hand hit. The Mansfield Amendment, which stipulates that Department of Defense research projects must have a clear military value, will have severe consequences for the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. These consequences have not shown up yet because many recent DOD grantsto the Division have been continuations of research projects already in progress.

Arts and Sciences graduate students have been unlucky, too. Eighty National Institutes of Health fellowships and 90 National Science Foundation grants are being terminated.