Ivy Leaguers need more green as tuition, fees surpass $40,000 a year

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Harvard University, the oldest U.S. institution of higher education, and the rest of the Ivy League for the first time will cost more than $40,000 a year in tuition and fees when classes begin in September.

Increases in tuition, fees, room and board by the schools ranged from 4.3 percent at Ithaca, New York-based Cornell University, which will charge $41,767, to 5.5 percent at Yale University of New Haven, Conn., which will cost $41,000, according to their Web sites. Harvard of Cambridge, Mass., raised its rate by 4.5 percent to $41,675.

"It puts an enormous burden on people who a generation ago would have been considered wealthy but aren't necessarily wealthy now," said Stanley Eleff, an attorney in Tampa, Fla., who graduated from Harvard in 1969.

Colleges across the nation have boosted tuition and fees by an average 5 to 6 percent a year since the mid-1990s, outpacing inflation by as much as 4 percentage points. The schools are struggling to find ways to absorb rising costs, including those for technology and personnel, said Sandy Baum, professor of economics at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Boosting professors' productivity, for example, would mean teaching more courses or increasing the size of classes, which could hurt the quality of academic programs, said Baum, who also works for the College Board, a nonprofit group in New York that oversees the SAT test.

Among the other Ivy League schools, Brown University of Providence, R.I., increased its tuition and fees by 4.9 percent to $41,770; Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., had a 4.8 percent rise to $41,355; University of Pennsylvania increased by 5.4 percent to $41,766; and Princeton University will charge $40,213, a 5 percent jump.

The total costs consist of mandatory charges at each school. At Dartmouth, for example, tuition and activity fees are $31,965, dormitory charges are $5,640 and the meal plan is $3,750.

New York-based Columbia University often announces tuition and fees later in the summer. Last year, the school raised the amount to $40,538.

The schools' prices put them in the top 3.9 percent of all colleges and universities in the nation, according to a College Board survey of educational costs in October.

Colleges also use the increases in tuition to help fund gains in financial aid, which has the effect of discounting the cost of college, Baum said.

"Year after year institutional aid budgets outpace the rates of tuition," said Tony Pals, a spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington, which represents 900 schools nationwide.

In the 1990s, tuition at private colleges and universities increased by 90 percent, while financial aid budgets surged 187 percent, Pals said.

Harvard Financial Aid Director Sally Donahue said 70 percent of students at the school receive some form of financial aid. Almost half the students get assistance based on financial need, and the rest receive merit aid, she said.

The universities could do more, particularly Harvard, whose $22.6 billion endowment is the largest in the nation, attorney Eleff said. When costs such as books are included, a student pays about $50,000 a year for attending an Ivy League school, he said.

Eleff is among members of Harvard's Class of 1969 who have criticized the large bonuses paid by the school to the managers of its endowment. The top five managers' bonuses totaled $100 million in the fiscal year that ended in June 2003, and last year, the top six got $78.4 million.

"You are talking about $200,000 for four years of college and that is just awfully hard for the professional class," Eleff said. "I represent Harvard at high schools in the area, and I must tell you when I am asked what does it cost to go to Harvard I am almost embarrassed to say."

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