‘Baby Bust’ Imprint : Fewer Apply at Many Private Colleges, Universities

The long-expected “baby bust” and spiraling tuitions are causing a drop in the number of applications at some Ivy League colleges and other top-flight private schools this year, although most public institutions such as the University of California continue to see increases.

Stanford University, for example, reports a drop of about 6% in applicants after a similar decline the year before. At Harvard University, applications are down between 5% and 10%, the first decline in 20 years. Dartmouth College has seen a decline of about 20%, after a big jump last year and then some adverse publicity about political trouble on campus.

“There is clearly a smaller pool of 18-year-olds and it’s a surprise that we weren’t down prior to this,” Marcia Connolly, Harvard’s associate director of admissions, said Wednesday.

Possibly contributing to the decline is the practice of charging application fees that range as high as $50, causing some students to apply to fewer colleges, admissions officials said.

In addition, expectations may be coming back to earth. In recent years, counselors say, high school seniors have been pressured by parents and society to apply to prestigious colleges even if there was little chance of acceptance. This year’s numbers suggest that is changing.

“That should not be viewed as all bad,” said Frank Burtnett, executive director of College Admission Counselors, based in Alexandria, Va. “Maybe young people are being counseled better, if I may be so bold to say that.”

Even with the decline in applications, admissions officers caution, very selective colleges still will accept fewer than one in three applicants and sometimes fewer than one in seven.

“If there is an overall tendency, it’s that applications seem to be down more at private than at public institutions, and more in the Midwest and Northeast than in the South and West. But there are exceptions all over the place,” said Peter Smith, an official at the American Assn. of Universities in Washington.

“The big privates are down,” said Rae Lee Siporin, UCLA’s director of undergraduate admissions. “I think it’s because of the cost of private higher education,”

For the UC system, applications are up slightly this year, to 49,134 from 48,335 last year. The relatively low cost of a UC education is a likely factor in the increase. Not including room and board, fees for in-state UC students next year will average $1,577, compared to $13,000 or more at many well-known independent institutions.

Within UC, there appears to be a trend for students to try their luck more at campuses where entrance is not as difficult as UCLA and UC Berkeley (Students seeking to attend UC generally apply to several campuses). Applications to UC Berkeley are expected to total about 21,300, about 1,000 fewer than last year, and applications to UCLA are expected to be about the same as last year’s 24,350, officials said. Figures are up, for example, at the Davis, Riverside and Santa Barbara campuses.

Application periods are not closed yet at many of the 65 members of the Assn. of Independent California Colleges and Universities, but the overall number of applications at those colleges appears the same as last year, said Hans Giesecke, director of marketing and research. Applications from California residents declined, probably because of the attraction of UC, while interest by out-of-staters in California private schools increased, he added.

Occidental College in Los Angeles has about 2,400 applicants, up 10% from last year, an increase which Admissions Director Charlene Liebau attributed to stronger recruiting. She said 46% of the applicants are from California, slightly more than last year.

A Declining Pool

Nationally, the number of 18-year-olds has been declining since 1980 and will continue to drop for a few more years. About 2.76 million students graduated from high school last year, and the total is expected to bottom out at 2.44 million in 1992. Then the so-called Echo Generation comes of age--the children of people born during the post-World War II Baby Boom. That’s why UC is planning to build as many as three new campuses by the end of the century.

In the last decade, many colleges offset the “baby bust” by enrolling large numbers of older and returning students, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Also, the rate of college attendance among high school graduates rose slightly.

As always, some campuses this year were affected by current events.

Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania bucked the trend of decline in the Northeast because a U.S. News and World Report survey named it the best liberal arts college in the nation and because of publicity surrounding one alumnus, Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, said Hannah Swallow, assistant dean of admissions.

At Dartmouth, news of a running conflict between the school’s administration and students who run a conservative newspaper probably hurt after years of application increases. “All the Ivies are down but we got a little sharper hit this year,” said admissions Dean Alfred Quirk.