Beleaguered Families

Harland W. Hoisington Jr. '48, who is the College's director of financial aid, often contends that Dartmouth's 11-term graduation requirement reduces the cost of a Dartmouth degree compared to colleges that require the equivalent of 12 terms of instruction and fees. Hoisington recently had more cheery news for beleaguered upper middle-class families, which, with little or no assistance from the College or the federal government, are paying a lot of money for 11 terms at Dartmouth.

The good news, in effect, is that college expenses are not the villain in the middleclass money squeeze. According to Hoisington's analysis, a family of four with an income of $30,000 would have paid $5,760, or 19.2 per cent of its income, toward a child's education at Dartmouth last year. At the same income percentile (90th), the family would have made $16,259 a decade earlier and would have paid $3,450, or 21.4 per cent of its income, to Dartmouth. The average cost over the ten-year period, according to Hoisington, was 20.6 per cent of income.

Hoisington does not deny that upper middle-class families are "feeling pressure." But the real causes, he suggests, are exemplified by increased fuel costs and taxes "rather than the increasing college costs, which, it would appear, are being held pretty much within the mainstream of the general increases in cost of living and average income."