Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1895-02-20
AN EDUCATION.
What 1t Costs to Go Through
College.
THE AVERAGE ANNUAL EXPENSES,
What the Average Student In the Bettsr
College Spends.-The Poor Student
Has No Show.

eoilege Spends.-The Poor Student
Has No Show.
The average cost to the student Der
year at the better college is larger than
the total income Of the average Ameri-
can family. The cost, too, has greatly
increased. l have lying before me
tables which indicate the cost of eduoa.
tion in certain respects at three s-.h
old and representative colleges as Har-
ward. Yale and Dartmouth since their
foundation. shall begin with the
former. From 1825-3O the average an
nual expenses Of student at Harvard
were $176. Of which one-half went for
tuition and half for board and room;
from 1831-40 the average was $188. 10;
from 1S40-48,$194; $4,000, ,$227 ($138
went for board and room; in the eos
it jumped from $26S to $437, two
thirds of which went for board and
room; 1SS1-82 the average expense to
an economical student ranged from
$4S4 to 1907, the latter sum including
few more material comforts, and in
1S93-94 these last figures had been
slightly reduced. At Yale the increase
Of expenses was nearly in the same
ratio, the average for the opening
year (1S21) being $175. and the aver
age for 1893 being $6S7.50. Eleven
catalogues of Dartmouth College which
l examined mention no expense prior to
1929, in which year the cost OF. tuition
was $26. other expenses amounting to
about $75. This scale of expense
changed little until 1869, when tuition
cost SOL, and other expenses amounted
to about $101. In 1899 the figures
were higher, tuition being 500 and
other expenses about $191. In 1880
the. total expenses per student at Water
Vile, Hamilton. Amherst, Brown and
the University of Pennsylvania ranged
from $84 at the first named to $3.50 at
the last in 1898 from $275 or more at
Waterville, to $685. or more at the Uni
versity Of Pennsylvania.
These facts necessitate the conclu-
sion that every element of the cost of
an education has in the last sixty years
increased three or four fold. 1t cannot
be said that this increase of cost can in
any way be avoided. 1t is simply a
part Of the increase which belongs to
the cost of living in simple and rural
community to living in a community
whose relations are more or less elabor-
ate. The college is part of the COM
munity; it is moved by all that moves
the community. The ordinary family
Of the community is spending several
times as much money as the family Of
the community Of two generations ago.
The college man does as the family
does of which he is member. It is
also to be said that the cost Of the ad-
ministration of college has vastly in
creased. Though complaints as to the
present small salaries of college pro-
fessors abound, yet these salaries have
increased quite as rapidly as most in
comes. At the period of the American
revolution the average salary of a
professor at Harvard was 9200.
EARLY in the century the salary was
81, 500. and remained at that figure till
|
to 81, 800. In 1854 it was raised to
$4,000. In the next twelve years it
was by successive increments SO in
creased that in 1865 it was So, 200. In
1869 it became 81, 900. The maximum
salary now paid in the college is 81,
500. and in the law school So.
The most expensive part, in certain
respects, of a college to-day is the
laboratory and the library. The labor.
atory is wholly new creation and the
library in its present extensive relations
is also new. The library of Harvard
College cost for the year for which the
last report is made $50, What a
laboratory costs it is hard to separate
from other elements of expense. But
each college is spending in scientific
instruction and in scientific apparatus
many times what it expended some
years ago. All this increase Of cost
must directly or indirectly increase
the cost of an education to eacf
student. Yet the cost to student fol
an education does not consist only Of
the amount of his formal fees and the
cost of board and room. The expenses
which are called incidental are now il
a few colleges larger than all others
Not few college men Of economical
turn find that when they have added
together the three things-the cost Of
tuition, room and board, the expendi
ture of the whole year will be repre-
sented by this sum multiplied by two
Now there can be no doubt that th'
cost of an education is keeping man.
men from receiving it, and the question
therefore recurs, Can anything be dom
to open the way to boys who want II
60 to college but who cannot pas
throuoh the narrow financial doorway