# College tuition in the 60's **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 14, 2011, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618 "2011-10-14T11:17:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618/41 "2011-10-16T05:39:55Z")
My parents went to Berkeley in the 60’s and tuition was free. I suppose there might have been a few fees, but it was incredibly cheap. By the time I went in the 90’s, tuition was still officially free, but the “registration fees” were thousands per semester and rising fast. Now it’s astronomical. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618/42 "2011-10-16T05:43:34Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > > > My guess is that very few applicants decline Ivy spots because they cannot afford the tuition or decide they don’t want the debt. [Here](http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/pc_institution.php) is a list of schools, including the entire Ivy League, that have pledged to eliminate or at least limit student loans in financial aid packages. Beyond that, the aid packages for lower-income students are quite generous. At Yale, for instance, “for students with family incomes below $60,000, after a student contribution from summer earnings and a work-study contribution of $2,500, the program covers the remaining student budget with grant aid.” > > > > I graduated from RPI in 1988 and even then was explicitly told that the school does not want people to decline admission or leave school before graduating for financial reasons. They would do their best to make it work for the student. > > Interesting, thank you. > > SO what proportion of students would be covered to say 50% or more of tuition? > > If the goal is to eliminate student loans for the poor, is this just happy noises or is it well on the way to reality? If so, why do so many younger people in the last decade or so cite student loans as one of their largest debts? (Suzy Ormand is always fun to listen to). Is the goal of a poor (financially) student to get into Ivy League so they do not end up with a massive debt, and the State schools are basically just generators of revenue for the banking system? I don’t know what proportion of students would be covered by 50% or more of tuition. The Ivy League and other top private schools are wealthy enough that they can afford to be generous with financial aid. The public universities, on the other hand, have lower sticker prices but are much less wealthy. So the actual cost may be much lower at a top private school than it is at a public university. That’s why I’d always advise someone to wait to hear about financial aid packages before deciding where to go. And it’s concern over the amount of debt that students have been acquiring recently that led to these no-loan pledges. And when I attended RPI in the late 1980s, we were told that something like 27% of the tuition was spent on financial aid (although I don’t remember the exact number). That didn’t make sense to us at the time; we thought that the school should have just lowered the tuition rate by 27%, or whatever it was. But it amounts to a cost shifting. Those whose parents are wealthy enough to afford the tuition without financial aid subsidized those who need it. It’s sort of similar to the way that hospitals overcharge the insured patients so that they can afford to provide care to the uninsured. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618/43 "2011-10-16T06:04:07Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Interesting, thank you. > > SO what proportion of students would be covered to say 50% or more of tuition? > > If the goal is to eliminate student loans for the poor, is this just happy noises or is it well on the way to reality? If so, why do so many younger people in the last decade or so cite student loans as one of their largest debts? (Suzy Ormand is always fun to listen to). Is the goal of a poor (financially) student to get into Ivy League so they do not end up with a massive debt, and the State schools are basically just generators of revenue for the banking system? Well, here’s Harvard’s [statement](http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do) about financial aid: > [@](#): > > All of our financial aid is awarded on the basis of demonstrated financial need – there are no academic, athletic or merit-based awards, and we meet the demonstrated need of every student, including international students, for all four years. We invite you to explore our web site for a detailed description of all aspects of our aid program, including our Harvard Financial Aid Initiative for low and moderate income students, under which families with incomes currently below $60,000 are not expected to contribute to college costs. Beginning in the fall of 2012, financial aid will be further expanded for low income students, when this income level will be increased to $65,000. > > We do not consider home equity or retirement accounts as resources in our determination of a family contribution, and aid packages do not include any loans. A typical student may receive over $150,000 in Harvard scholarship assistance over four years and the majority of students receiving scholarship are able to graduate debt-free. And here are the [figures](http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/information_about_hopkins/facts_and_statistics/tuition_and_financial_aid/financial_aid_statistics/index.cfm) for Johns Hopkins University, an expensive private university that is not part of the Ivy league: > [@](#): > > Financial Aid Statistics > > Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering > 2010-2011 Academic Year > > ``` > Full-time undergraduate enrollment: 4,964 > Undergraduates receiving need-based financial aid: 2,358 (48 percent) > Average need-based financial aid package: $33,142 > Undergraduates receiving need-based grant assistance: 2,051 (41 percent) > Average need-based grant award: $29,595 > Undergraduates receiving university merit and non-need based aid > (Hodson, National Merit, lacrosse, etc.): 95 > Average university merit/non-need based award: $27,049 > Total JHU grant aid awarded (need-based and non-need based): $61.2 million > Total loans to undergraduate students: $13.2 million > Total loans to parents: $9.7 million > Total financial aid awarded from all sources to undergraduate students: $98.6 million > > ``` Basically, the main goal for most of these wealthy private schools is to ensure that anyone who gets accepted can attend, regardless of how rich or poor they are. As for your question about why “so many younger people in the last decade or so cite student loans as one of their largest debts,” that’s because all of these expensive private schools collectively account for a very small proportion of the total post-secondary student body in the United States. The 8 Ivy League colleges between them have an undergraduate body of about 65,000 students. One large state school (Ohio State, UT Austin) can have almost 40,000 undergrads on one campus. The University of California system has about 170,000 undergrads, and the Cal State system has over 400,000. Despite their ubiquity in the movies and other areas of popular culture, exclusive and expensive private universities like Harvard and Yale do NOT represent the experience of the vast majority of American college students. And the reason that debt has become such a big issue is precisely because of the sort of figures that **RadicalPi** and i have given in this thread. My wife got her undergrad degree from UC Berkeley, and the price she paid for the whole four years of her degree is just a little bit more than what she would pay for 1 year at Berkeley today. I’m teaching a bunch of seniors in the Cal State system this semester, and in just the four years that these students have been in college, their yearly fees have risen by 67 percent. For the most part, the debt crisis facing America’s graduates has not been caused by schools that charge 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year; it has been caused by schools that charge 8 or 10 or 15 thousand. The amount that students have to pay (often using loans) has increased dramatically over the past decade, as declining tax revenues and declining state support have led to dramatic fee increases. These increases have moved far ahead of general inflation, and also well ahead of wage increases. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618/44 "2011-10-16T17:35:24Z")
Here is a comparison of the endowment, cost to attend (tuition, fees, room and board), financial aid award and indebtedness of students at Yale and the University of Connecticut. I’ve also added the numbers for the University of Michigan, as it’s considered a “public Ivy” (and has a fairly substantial endowment). The endowment numbers are from Wikipedia, while the rest of the numbers are from [Collegedata.com](http://Collegedata.com). As you can see, those attending the public universities are acquiring more debt even though the sticker prices are lower at those schools. ```auto Yale University Endowment $19.4 billion Cost of attendance: $57,850 Average Freshman Award $40,900 Average Indebtedness of 2010 Graduates $9,254 University of Connecticut Endowment $329 million Cost of Attendance in-state: $25,220 Cost of Attendance out-of-state: $42,116 Average Freshman Award $13,731 Average Indebtedness of 2010 Graduates $23,237 University of Michigan Endowment: $7.8 billion Cost of Attendance in-state: $26,030 Cost of Attendance out-of-state: $51,178 Average Freshman Award $10,432 Average Indebtedness of 2010 Graduates $27,828 ``` ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618/45 "2011-10-16T19:05:32Z")
I’m trusting my rusty memory here, but when my dad died in 2003, I came across some financial aid paperwork for my college days. I attended the University of Florida starting in the fall of 1979, and I _think_ I remember seeing $12 per quarter (semester?) hour. Wish I could be more helpful - if I find the actual papers, I’ll modify if needed. UT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-tuition-in-the-60s/599618.md?page=2)