Provost Buck Opposed to Increasing College Tuition

College tuition hikes were vigorously opposed in a pamphlet co-authored by Provost Buck and issued yesterday by the Commission on Financing Higher Education.

"Increased dependence on student fees," the commission wrote, "impairs the opportunity of colleges and universities to make long-range plans for educational improvement, introduces elements of instability into operations, and lowers the quality of educational services. Experience since 1945 has amply demonstrated these propositions."

Besides Buck, six university and college presidents and four laymen make up the independent commission, sponsored by the Association of American Universities and financed by the Carnegie Corporation.

The pamphlet, entitled "The Impact of Inflation upon Higher Education," is an interim report in the commission's "long-range study of the financial problems of American colleges and universities."

"The greatest financial peril confronting higher education ... today is the prospect of further inflation," the commission said. "Colleges and universities cannot simply increase their prices; they do not operate in any such way."

Noting that expenditures by educational institutions in 1947-48 were two and a half times the 1939-40 figure, the commission said that in the same period student fees had been raised to provide a much larger percentage of institutions' swollen budgets.

Student fees supplied 52.9 percent of private and 18.6 percent of public institutions' income in 1939-40. In 1947-48, the commission said, they supplied 63.5 and 31.5 percent.

With other sources of income lagging badly, the commission concluded that "further inflation is a clear and present danger to the continued financial ability of higher education to perform its essential services."

Members of the commission are: the presidents of Brown, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Missouri Universities, Union College, and California Institute of Technology; two lawyers; and two businessmen.