"Out of the FAS budget, what these wise analysts concluded was the real cost was about one-and-a-half times the charged cost," or close to $45,000, he says.

Knowles says that analyzing per student expenditures at Harvard is complicated due to many factors, particularly the inclusion of both undergraduate and graduate students in the FAS.

A close look at the FAS annual budget for the fiscal year of 1996 breaks down Harvard's educational costs per student, lumping undergraduate and graduate students together:

*Harvard's libraries, third in size only to the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, are expensive. Total library costs were roughly $7,670 per student last year, more than the cost of Faculty salaries ($5,100).

* Faculty salaries make up a small portion of total instructional costs, which comprise $12,600 of the student dollar. These costs include instructional support, administrative and support staff for professors, fringe benefits, teaching fellows and post-doctorate students and faculty recruitment.

* Harvard spend much more per student on athletics ($980) than it goes on counseling and advising services ($300). All in all, student services comprise $3,370 of FAS's per student expenditures.

* Operations and maintenance costs for housing were $3,450 per undergraduate last year. By comparison, the University charged students $3,510 for housing.

Is It Worth It?

Determining the University's cost to educate students is difficult, but administrators say that assessing the worth of a Harvard education is an even more formidable task.

"Measuring the value of an education, outside of measuring the value of a symphony orchestra, is one of the most difficult things to do," Pilbeam says.

Pilbeam adds that the simple economic laws of supply and demand show that a Harvard education is as valuable as ever.

"In a liberal society, the only way to decide the value of something is whether people still want it," he says. "The only answer for that is that demand seems to be increasing."

In recent years, the admission rate has dropped to nearly 10 percent, due almost entirely to rising numbers of applicants.

Another way to appraise the value of a Harvard education, Bok says, is to look at "the return on the investment."

"If you pay $30,000 a year, does the average Harvard-educated student earn enough more than the graduates of other colleges or junior colleges that pay less to make it worthwhile?" Bok asks.

Most observers agree that the return of future earnings outweighs the investment in a Harvard education.