1988-'89 Tuition Hits $18,210

You could buy 72.84 vowels on Wheel of Fortune.

You could buy 364,200 pieces of Bazooka bubble gum.

You could take 30,350 rides on the T, buy 4.56 Yugos, or drive two-fifths of the way around the earth in a Cambridge taxicab.

Or you could go to Harvard. For one year.

Undergraduate fees for tuition, room and board will reach $18,210 for the 1988-89 school year, a 6.5 percent increase, University officials announced yesterday.

The Harvard Corporation approved the increase above last year's $17,100 tab earlier this week. The hike is nominally steeper than last year's, but higher inflation makes this year's increase a comparative bargain in real terms.

"When the effects of a 4.8 percent inflation rate in the Boston area during the past calendar year are removed, this year's increase in the cost of attending Harvard and Radcliffe is lower than it has been at any time during this decade," Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) A. Michael Spence said in a press release yesterday.

Inflation and cuts in government grants were the main reasons for the tuition increase, College officials said.

Highest Costs in Ivy League

Harvard will remain the most expensive Ivy League school in the next academic year, but only by a slim margin. Tuition and fees at Dartmouth will reach $18,199 next year, a rise of 6.5 percent. Tuition at Yale will rise 6.1 percent to $18,060, and Princeton students will pay $17,967, 6.2 percent more than they paid for their sojourns in New Jersey last year.

As of yesterday, Columbia was the only Ivy League school that had not announced tuition and fees for the 1988-89 school year. Officials at Columbia said they expected that the fees would rise "at least 7 percent"

Tuition Rates Around the Ivy League College  '87-'88  '88-'89  % Hike Harvard  $17,100  $18,210  6.5 Dartmouth  $17,085  $18,199  6.5 Yale  $17,020  $18,060  6.1 Princeton  $16,918  $17,967  6.2 Brown  $16,950  $17,962  6.0 Penn  $16,841  $17,800  5.7 Cornell  $16,320  $17,460  6.9 Columbia  *  $17,092  *

* = Columbia plans to release its '88-'89 tuition rates sometime in early May. beyond the $17,092 charged last year.

Although the federal government has steadilycut student financial aid over the past few years,College financial administrators predictedyesterday that this year's tuition increase wouldnot hurt the two-thirds of the student populationthat receive financial aid.

"We will continue to meet the needs of allstudents," said Janet L. Irons, associate directorof financial aid. "There is enough money to goaround."

Harvard will raise scholarships and financialaid by 7.7 percent to $20.6 million in the nextacademic year, according to the press release.

Candace R. Corvey, associate dean for finance,said Harvard has drawn increasing sums from itsendowment to supplement tuition for the pastseveral years. Corvey said that while students'fees will always make up much of the Collegebudget, the endowment is used to shield studentsfrom the full effects of constantly rising costs.

This year, about half the budget of the Facultyof Arts and Sciences came from tuition payments.Endowment income, government grants, and privategifts provide the remainder