With a price tag of $8,135, Harvard Summer School is no bargain, especially considering the College Board report that 70 percent of students attending four-year colleges in 2004-2005 paid less than $8000 in annual tuition and fees.

And Harvard Summer School’s going rate, at more than $1,000 per a week, makes it more expensive than competing programs at premier institutions like Yale, Brown, Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, and Northwestern.

An analysis of costs at summer schools around the country conducted by The Crimson revealed that while Harvard Summer School’s 5,000 students may not pay a premium for their classes, about half of them fork over sums of money for room and board significantly larger than those charged by other summer schools—and by Harvard College for the use of those same rooms and dining halls during the academic year.

HARVARD HILTON?

About 2,500 Harvard Summer School students pay these steep costs for the privilege of living on the Harvard campus and eating their meals in the decorous Annenberg Hall. Forty percent of the boarders are high-school students from across the country who have little choice but to pay up to live on-campus with supervision.

Harvard Summer School costs nearly $466 per week for room and board, $184 per week more than Harvard College charges students during the school year for the exact same rooms and food, and $139 a week more than the average of $327 per a week charged by nine competing programs at top-tier institutions.

This fall, Harvard College students will pay about $6.20 a meal and $21.60 per night, while summer school students are currently paying $10.71 per meal for the same food and $34.38 for each night in the same dorms.

Assistant dean at the Summer School Robert Neugeboren ’83 said, however, that Summer School students living in the upperclass houses do get more space than students normally get during the year. The various houses used by the summer school hold about 400 students each during the school year, but 240 students at most during the summer.

Neugeboren did not mention whether the Secondary School students living in Harvard Yard for the summer got more space than Harvard freshmen have during the year.

FAS financial administrators did not return calls requesting comment on why room and board costs are so much higher over the summer than during the year, and Summer School financial administrators were traveling and unavailable for comment.

However, Neugeboren did say that it would be difficult to untangle shared expenses between the summer school and college students to determine if one group is paying more than their fair share.

“The Summer School is part of FAS,” he said, explaining that because the Summer School is financially a unit of FAS, it is nearly impossible to separate the Summer School’s costs and finances from the rest of FAS, especially because of shared costs.

STANDARD FARE