A Fee Is Added

IN SEEKING THE ANSWERS to the heavy financial problems that press upon it today, the independent college has very few avenues of solution open to it. There are, in fact, only three main sources of income for the privately endowed college: (1) the return on endowments and other invested funds, (2) student fees, and (3) gifts. The first of these is itself a problem rather than an answer Dartmouth's endowment funds last year provided only 27% of operating income as against 35% before the war. That leaves only student fees and gifts as capable of providing any immediate solution to the need for more income to match the rising cost of maintaining college operations at their present level.

Dartmouth has just announced that, effective with the fall semester of 1949, an "added fee toward the cost of education" of $75 will be added to the annual tuition charge of $600. What is particularly important about this added fee is that it will be set apart from the basic tuition fee and will be remitted for all men granted scholarship aid. Those who like things tied up in neat little packages will wonder why the College doesn't say that its new tuition or combined fee is $675 and let it stand at that. There is a reason why it doesn't; in fact, the form in which the Trustees have chosen to increase the students' share of meeting Dartmouth's educational costs constitutes a rather significant step for the independent college.

Even with the postwar increases in the combined fee, the students at Dartmouth have continued to pay only about half of what it cost the College to

educate them. Every student, even the man paying the full fee, has been the beneficiary of "financial aid" made possible by endowment income and gifts for current use, notably the Alumni Fund and will continue to be "on scholarship." As a traditional policy followed by all the independent colleges, this way of establishing student fees has had its good points—although, in looking back, one wonders about the extent to which it came out of the hides of inadequately paid faculties and staffs.

If quality education is to continue to be the hallmark of private colleges, student fees must reflect rising costs. The Dartmouth Trustees have accordingiv shown a willingness to examine the logic of the policy by which student fees traditionally have been set. The principle which guided them in establishing an "added fee toward the cost of education" was that of asking those who can to bear a larger portion of the cost to the College of their education. Making this added charge as a separate fee underlines this basic principle and it also helps to create awareness of the extent to which each student is the beneficiary of Dartmouth's resources. The remitting of the added fee in the case of each scholarship man likewise emphasizes the ability-to-pay basis on which the Trustees have taken this necessary step. So there would seem to be sound reasons for handling the added fee in the unique way in which it is being handled.

Dartmouth's total fees of $675, when effective next fall, will represent an increase of 50% in student charges since the prewar year of 1941. Instructional costs during that same period have risen 60% and general college expenses have risen 55%. With the total of annual operating costs now past the three-million-dollar mark, and with enrollment moving downward toward its prewar level, even the added fee is not likely to boost total student payments much beyond the usual proportion of approximately half of total operating income. That other institutions in the privately endowed group are facing exactly the same financial problem as Dartmouth, and are resorting to the same partial solution, has been indicated in recent weeks by announcements of higher fees at Princeton and Harvard. The financial problems of the entire group are so similar that no one need be surprised by other fee announcements in the months ahead. What will be more interesting to watch for is whether any other college follows Dartmouth's lead in casting a questioning eye on the traditional character of student fees.