In the past students have been forced to bear only part of their university's rising costs. Other sources of revenue--government assistance, endowment income, and private gifts--have grown fast enough to keep student fees down.

But educational costs have begun to soar. Kingman Brewster, president of Yale, estimates that his operating budget will climb from 89 million dollars to 206 milion dollars by 1976 without a change in enrollment. At present, no one foresees any significant increase in public or private aid to cover these rising costs. If the Bank loans were generally available, Congress and wealthy donors might even feel justified in reducing the present level of their aid. Since the Zaccharias plan assures that every student can finance his education regardless of its cost, colleges would probably raise student charges to incredibly high levels to pay for the vast increase in their own expenses.

Gleason and others who support the Bank deny that shifting many of these costs to students will by-pass society or hurt borrowers. They point out that the country would still pay in real terms by diverting resources from production to education. They predict that a student who borrowed money to meet his huge expenses would be able to push up his salary to compensate for the large amounts he would owe the Bank.

In money terms, though, it would be the students who would pay for their education, and it is unlikely that many of them would have sufficient market power to force their incomes to such high levels that they would not mind sending a great deal of money to the Bank each year.

While students will naturally have to absorb some of the rising costs, shifting all of the increase to them would be an undesirable result of the Zaccharias plan. "It would be unfortunate if attention were focused on just this one program," R. Jerrold Gibson, Assistant Director of Financial Aid, cautions. "When you head into a crisis like this one, you have a tendency to look for first aid. What you really need is a balanced solution."

Congress to adopt a comprehensive student aid lems with the proposal. Under the terms suggested by the panel, it would be profitable for a wealthy student to borrow money, invest it, and buy out of the program immediately after graduation. Nevertheless, the easy availability of the loans is one of the principal attractions of the plan, and the committee has recommended that a student be required only to sign a form stating that he needs the money for his education.

It has also been pointed out that women who borrow money and have to re-pay it might seem less attractive to men looking for wives. The committee has proposed several ways to minimize this handicap.

Prospects for immediate passage of the program are dim. The Administration wants to delay new domestic expenditures until the war in Vietnam ends. The President's Science Advisor, Donald F. Hornig, refused to endorse the plan when he presented it to newsmen. Zaccharias had reported that his committee wanted the Bank plan "pressed and pressed to completion," but Hornig stressed that "we are not proposing establishment of the Bank. We are releasing the proposal as an idea that has to be shaped by public discussion."

In the next few years pressure for massive federal assistance to students is certain to increase. The Zaccharias proposal for a Bank is the most efficient way of providing this aid yet devised. Despite the Administration's caution and the opposition from the large public universities, it seems likely that the Zaccharias plan will eventually be enacted.

Besides helping individual students with their choice of college, the Bank would reinforce currently strong aid programs at the high-cost colleges like Harvard, which is already searching for new ways to help students meet their bills. If it is coupled with increased public and private aid to universities, the Bank can present one long-term answer to the financial problems besetting higher education.