Administrators from about 75 New England colleges and universities shared energy-saving ideas at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday during panel discussions on energy conservation at colleges.

Sponsored by the New England Board of Higher Education under a Department of Energy (DOE) grant, the conference covered the problems of managing energy use on campuses and of financing conservation programs.

Nancy L. Goodwin, president of Greenfield Community College, said the key to that college's 40-per-cent decline in energy costs was relying on a seven - member maintenance crew whose familiarity with equipment and facilities eliminated inefficiency.

"She's really emphasized the human factor. Her people take real pride in their work; they've educated the rest of the campus," Susan D. Wiltshire, coordinator of the discussions, said yesterday.

In the same discussion Ruth Benedict, director of energy at Yale University, said enlisting students in conservation efforts had cut dormitory energy use at Yale by 17 per cent.

The Bureaucratic Touch

Administrators also met with state energy directors and with Frank Stewart, DOE's director of state and local programs, who outlined government energy grant programs.

"Colleges must design and implement energy programs as soon as possible to save maximum energy," Stewart said. "We're all on a very fast track, for conservation reasons, political reasons and budgetary reasons," he added.

Eleven Harvard officials attended the conference, Wiltshire said. Former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, moderated a panel on "Making the Case for Investment in Energy: Conservation."

Officials from DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency today will discuss ways of dealing with governmental regulatory constraints.