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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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082189
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08218900.037
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1990-09-19
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NATION, Page 24Brain TrustsWashington wants to know if colleges are fixing prices
President of the debating team, 1300 on her boards, reads Noam
Chomsky in her spare time, parents make $30,000 a year. Let's see,
$3,000 in financial aid sounds about right. You on board, Brown?
What about you, Barnard?
Every spring, exchanges like this occur among the deans of 23
top private colleges. The idea is to avoid bidding wars for
students accepted by more than one college, and to ensure that
institutions are similarly interpreting financial information
submitted by parents. But the Justice Department has decided to
look into this practice, as well as into the fact that within
groupings -- the Ivy League schools and the Seven Sisters, for
example -- yearly tuitions tend to be similar. Presumably Justice
wants to determine whether there is any violation of the Sherman
Antitrust Act, which prohibits restraint of trade.
The cost of college is a hot topic because tuitions will
increase up to 9% this fall. Total costs at Harvard currently run
about $20,000 a year; Maine's Colby College costs about $18,900.
The similarity is not the result of price fixing, says Colby
President William Cotter. The reason, he says, is "that a Ford
costs about the same as a Chevy," or in the case of Harvard and
Yale, a BMW costs about the same as a Jaguar. Cotter admits that
the market is not price sensitive. "A family decides on private vs.
public," he says. "But then they don't pick the cheapest within the
category."
Colleges started sharing information in the 1950s. Now critics
say the system is tantamount to price fixing. College officials
disagree, but they are complying with the inquiry. "I've done
almost nothing but work on this request since July 31," says
Amherst College treasurer James Scott. It will be worth the effort,
he says, if critics "bitching and moaning about college costs" come
to see that no one is getting rich teaching the country's children.