I gather that many colleges in the 60’s had tuition levels at like $50-$150 for a full semester.
Is that true?
Were tuition levels this low as a result of public funding?
In 1990, my state run college charged 60 USD per credit. A standard semester was 14 credits, so 840 USD per semester. Using an online inflation calculator, that is $202.45 USD in 1965. So, I’m only close, and I’m using data from my state-run school, not an Ivy League. Did you account for inflation before you figured how low the tuition was?
PDF table of Yale University tuition rates from 1976 through 1999. PDF chart showing undergraduate tuition growth from 1951 through 1997.
I believe that there has been a tremendous amount of tuition inflation in recent decades, outpacing the Consumer Price Index.
Tuition levels are still that low at many universities. At the one I work at, it’s currently less than €240 per semester, and for this you get many benefits besides tuition, including unlimited free public transport throughout most of the state, free legal advice, unlimited free theatre tickets for yourself, and a substantial discount (around 30%) at the cafeteria. Any one of those benefits alone is worth more than €240.
When I started college in the mid-70’s tuition was $700 (Canadian) and the minimum wage was $1.85. I could earn enough working minimum wage and living at home to pay my tuition and the $800 residence cost. Student groups whining about tuition costs usually mentioned that the government paid about 5/6 the cost, tuition paid the rest. Summer jobs were pretty common, many big corporations had a student summer job program. Over 4 years, IIRC, tuition went to $1100 and residence to $1200. Minimum wage went to $3.50; that was the big OPEC oil shock inflation time.
Today, typical tuition is (I think) about $3500 to $5000 in Canada. Residence is another $5000. Minimum wage is around $9 to $10 across Canada. There is no way you can earn your tuition and residence costs doing a summer job at minimum wage. (12 weeks x 40 hrs x $10 = $4800 - minus taxes) The number I’ve heard kicked about is government pays maybe 2/3 now, after extensive cutbacks in funding and extensive cost-cutting on campus, and serious neglect of the infrastructure.
I heard that the state colleges in the USA are relatively the same cost as Canada, but the private ones have stratospheric costs - which explains why it’s easy for Brooke Shields to go to Princeton. When you add in the tuition cost, there’s not much competition.
I know one of my relatives in the USA delayed entering her chosen college until January so that she could qualify as a state resident - living there since July - and so saved a bundle on tuition. Canada generally only charges extra to foreign students; except I heard Quebec charges out-of-province students extra too, which is a whole nother debate.
Mid-70s, California I paid $15/credit at the local State University and $5/credit at any of the local community colleges. An over-loaded schedule would cost me $250 a semester in tuition.
Even in the early 1980s, my tuition at a public college (University of Wisconsin-Madison) was around $450 per semester.
It was amusing to see signs at MIT left over from the 1960s from the semi-annual tuition riots. They read
In the 1970s we would’ve loved to pay 2000 for a year. (Everyone I knew was on some kind of financial aid. Certainly most people can’t afford an MIT education, including most of those who actually go there.)
I just checked the University of Maryland, which is neither an exceptionally good state university nor a particularly poor one. Full time tuition (12 credits) for state residents is $3483.00. Mandatory fees are another $844.65, for a total of $4327.65.
My understanding is that tuition keeps going up largely because universities have so many more administrators than they used to. I thought the Chronicle of Higher Education had an article on this in the last year or so, but I can’t find it and now I’m wondering if I saw it somewhere else.
Large numbers of administrators are one reason for the tuition inflation. Also, the public universities are competing with everyone else for top faculty, so those salaries are rising as well. But I believe the OP is correct that decreased amounts of public funding is also a cause.
BTW, the $700 etc. for Canada I gave were for a whole year, 2 semesters, fall and spring.
They eventually went to per-course rates.
When I was at the University of Missouri (Class of 1974), ISTR tuition was in the $250-$300 per semester range for full-time students. At St. Louis University (a private school) tuition had just hit $1,000 a semester.
State subsidies were a part of it, but so were low salaries for everyone but tenured faculty. Also, schools were in the middle of a nationwide building program to take care of the baby boomers, and the bills for all that would come due a few years later.
Also, the infrastructure costs were a lot less back then. Dormitories and classrooms weren’t air conditioned, computer systems were minimal (Want to sign up for a class? Get to the gym early on registration day, wait in line seperately for each class and hope your section hasn’t closed by the time you get to the desk) and things like cable TV and individual phones were unheard of.
I seem to remember that four years at Union College in the 1970s was around $8000, and that was considered a high tuition.
When I started Penn (a full Ivy with tuition to match) in 1954, it was $700. It went up $100/year to reach $1000 by 1958. We were horrified. After that I had fellowships and didn’t pay any attention to tuition, but I am sure it was up to $2000 in a few years.
Penn State was more like $300 in 1954, but you had to pay room and board (I was a commuter at Penn).
60’s? Hell.
My first semester of college was $60* including fees. That was 1982. By 1986 it was $450 per semester.
That same school now (well 2 years ago when I looked it up for my kid) was $7200 per semester.
I really feel for the younger generation. 
- edit - not per credit - per SEMESTER full time load.
I actually believe UMD is considered one of the top tier state universities in the country…it’s not considered on par with the “public ivies” like Michigan or UVA, but it’s considered top tier, not middling.
Another pair of data points: 1976, Florida: community college was $15/sem hr, state university $23/hr, so $240 and $368 per 16-credit-hour semester respectively. Fees were comparatively low, perhaps $20/semester.
I don’t have exact data, but I think my parents said that my costs for a year (two semesters) of college were about $1000. That would have been 1963-64, and would have included tuition, room and board, but not books, for a state university in Ohio.
Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn was 16 bucks a credit hour in the 60s. Back then college was affordable.
I attended Grove City College in the early 60’s. It was $300/semester, less than similar private schools due to the generosity of J. Howard Pew and Sun Oil company. State schools were much less.
Let’s not discuss GCC and Pew less we go off topic and the thread locked. I will not respond to off topic posts.