Public College Tuition Rises 7.7%, Survey Finds

College tuitions nationwide jumped again this year, and the steepest increases came at four-year public institutions, apparently reflecting the slumping economy and weaker state budgets, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Tuition at public colleges and universities nationwide rose 7.7% this year--more than twice the rate of inflation--although California schools tended to hold steady, the College Board reported in its annual cost survey. Private four-year colleges saw a less dramatic increase, with tuition and fees climbing 5.5% this fall.

Students are also paying more for room and board, bringing the total average cost to $9,008 a year for four-year public schools and $23,578 for private schools. Last year’s survey found that tuition and room and board averaged $8,400 at public colleges and $22,500 at private institutions.

Although the trend in recent years has been for college costs to outpace inflation, education leaders said they were troubled by the acceleration in this year’s increases, especially at public schools.

Even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, experts said, falling tax revenue and reduced state support were forcing public schools to raise tuition. Private schools boosted theirs to offset lower stock prices and resulting endowment losses. But the economic outlook is clearly worse since the attacks, the experts noted.

“The deteriorating economy has made it necessary for many public schools to substitute tuition increases for state support,” said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, the nation’s leading higher education organization. “For the privates, the increases probably represent apprehension about endowment yields.”

California’s public colleges and universities were a notable exception, however, generally holding the line on fees, officials said. They said the economic downturn was slower to hit here.

The $3,683 for fees for California residents enrolled at UCLA were actually down $16 from last year. The overall costs of attendance were roughly the same as before, about $13,700.

The cost of enrolling in the nation’s elite private colleges and universities was far higher.

Harvard raised its tuition and fees by $872 to more than $26,019 this year, the survey showed. With room and board, books and other expenses, the total cost of attending the school came to more than $36,000.

Yale, Princeton and other Ivy League schools posted similar tuition and overall costs. Private institutions in California were about the same, with USC’s tuition and fees up $1,410 to $25,533 this year and Stanford’s up $1,751 to $26,192.

College officials pointed out that most students do not pay full price, however, with widespread tuition discounting and financial aid packages available to low-income and even many middle-income students.

“Very few students actually pay the sticker price,” said Morton Owen Schapiro, the president of Williams College in Massachusetts and an expert in the economics of higher education.

But while the College Board also reported Tuesday that a record amount of financial aid--$74 billion--was available to students this year, the trends in college financing present serious problems for low- and middle-income families.

A growing percentage of that money--58% of the total--comes from government-backed loans instead of grants. Twenty years ago, loans made up 41% of financial aid for college, officials said.

At a Washington news conference, College Board President Gaston Caperton said another concern is the growing trend, even among public schools, away from “need-based” financial aid to a merit-based system that benefits middle-income students at the expense of the poor.

In response, he said, the College Board is creating a commission of leading educators that will study the issue over the next year to 18 months to try to make sure that financial aid benefits low-income students.

“The ones who can least afford a college education are those most likely to be left behind, especially in bad economic times,” said Caperton, a former governor of West Virginia. “We want to make sure that financial aid is helping the people it was intended to help.”

He and other leading educators said the rising tuition and fees at public institutions are not surprising, as the economy weakened in recent months, and many said the situation is likely to get worse.

“When the economy goes south, higher education is a relatively easy place for states to look for savings,” said Michael S. McPherson, president of Macalester College in Minnesota. “It’s usually just not as high on the priority list as issues like Medicaid, prisons and K-12 education.”

But Caperton also urged Americans to keep this year’s tuition and fee increases in perspective. He pointed out that more than 40% of students who attend four-year colleges still pay less than $4,000 for tuition and fees and that students at local community colleges pay an average of less than $2,000.

He said there has been too much focus over the years on the cost of college and too little on the lifetime returns of that four-year investment.

Given the economic uncertainty in the wake of the terrorist attacks, he said, a college education is now more important than ever.

But several experts said the real test for California will come next year, when the effects of the nationwide downturn and the state’s energy crisis are more apparent.

The College Board, a New York-based nonprofit that is the owner of the SAT admissions test, bases its figures on an annual survey of 2,700 colleges and universities.