The 16-person Princeton committee--chaired by the provost and comprised of the dean of the faculty, the vice president for finance and administration, six faculty members, one staff member, two graduate students and four undergraduates--makes a budget recommendation which includes the tuition price to the president of the university. The president must then approve it.

According to Spies, the committee's budget and tuition proposal has been accepted in full each of the 30 years it has been in operation.

"They have historically become the budget," Spies says.

Spies says that Princeton, like its New England counterparts, cannot extricate itself from the ongoing competitiveness of the Ivy League.

"We would kill each other for a good student or faculty member," Spies says. "We are trying to be a bit better or a lot better than Harvard or Yale."

But Spies says that tuition discrepancies right now are not substantial enough to make a dent in the competition.

"Being $100, $500 or $1,000 different isn't going to make a difference," Spies says.

While Thomas H. Wright, vice president and secretary of Princeton, acknowledges that market pressures do play a role, the competition between the Ivy League colleges is not as relevant as one might think, he says.

"There are competitive pressures, but it's not just competition among peer institutions," Wright says. "It's a concern about [students] leaving our entire set of institutions and going public."