MIT came close, offering students domestic rates as low as $.09 per minute and near-market-level international rates with a $3 monthly long distance access fee.

Schools such as Cornell, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia all bear outdated long-distance carrier contracts. Each chooses to place an even heavier burden on international students than Harvard does by balancing lower domestic rates with international calling costs that exceed even Harvard's rates.

"Our rates were structured in the mid-1980s, and we are now going through a process of recosting everything," says Patricia A. Searles, deputy director of academic technologies at Cornell University.

Searles says some feel that they are being overburdened, but any kind of redistribution would lead to a hike in rates for other services.

Cornell's international students are hit the worst, she says.

"You can pick up any newspaper or magazine and hear the international rates that are offered to consumers, and because our rates are based on business rates, ours are substantially higher. It's frustrating," Searles says.

Campus telecom offices act in students' best interests, says Jeri A. Semer, executive director of the Association for Telecommunications Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA), of which Harvard is a member.

"Colleges and universities are driven to set the best possible rates for their students because they know that students will see lower rates advertised and that will cause confusion," says Semer. "Unfortunately, the colleges themselves are somewhat stymied by the fact that they can't get those rates."

Future Rate Cuts?

With competition fierce among companies and Harvard looking for a better deal, the next school year could ring in savings.

Upcoming renegotiations for Harvard and other schools have significant implications for the three major long-distance carriers.

Long-distance fees from students in residence are big business for the carriers: the three largest collect hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year from them. But AT&T is making moves to corner the market by beating its competitors rates, making an offer that neither Sprint nor MCI WorldCom would match.

Jay P. Summerall, director of college and university sales for AT&T, said his company is prepared to make major changes in contracts between the long distance carrier and the University.

"It's tough for a university to provide service at a rate that's competitive with what consumers pay unless you take the cost of the back bone down. The business model is challenging," Summerall says.

AT&T has launched a program that replaces the traditional model used at schools including Harvard, where the carrier sells to the school and the school to students.