College Tuition

It sounds intriguing at first. You make a single payment now, often less than $10,000, and forever put aside worries about how you'll pay the ever- escalating cost of a college education for your child. The prepaid, or advance, tuition-payment programs, pioneered by Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and by several state-funded plans, have gained in popularity in recent years. They offer the obvious advantage to a parent of paying for four years of college tuition at current rates, when a child is only a toddler, and then saving what could be thousands in fees years later.

No matter how old your kids are - 14 months or 14 years - it's never too early to plan for college, because a four-year college education carries a hefty price tag. For the current academic year, the average price of tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses at a public college totals $8,885. At a private college the costs average $17,220. One year at an Ivy League school is about $21,125. Experts estimate that costs will increase around 7 percent a year. This means the parents of today's newborn will face a bill of approximately $32,100 (public school)

This is the season when colleges across the country mail letters of rejection and acceptances to high school seniors. For millions of young Americans and their parents, who have been anxiously awaiting word, this can be a time of great joy. But for almost all college-bound seniors, this joy will soon be tempered by the tremendous financial strain of enrolling for next fall's classes. A student entering college can expect to pay an average of more than $28,000 at a public institution and more than $50,000 at a private one in four years.

Imagine the shock Margaret Harris felt when she walked out of a child support hearing in Philadelphia Family Court last month. She had just been told that - contrary to her expectations - her ex-husband was no longer legally responsible for paying any part of her daughter Amanda's college tuition. Until the hearing, she assumed her wealthier ex-husband was liable for at least some of Amanda's post-secondary educational costs. In fact, she believed - as thousands of other Pennsylvania single mothers must have - that it was the law. "I was stunned," Harris said.

Reports about higher-education costs in recent years have been clear and constant: Putting a child through college, or paying one's own way, can be an expensive enterprise. College tuition in Pennsylvania and around the nation has doubled during the last decade, and college administrators expect that trend to repeat itself during the 1990s. Yesterday, state officials inaugurated a program they hope will help parents and others shoulder those costs. It's essentially a savings plan that locks in today's price for tomorrow's tuition at one of Pennsylvania's 32 state universities or community colleges.

Two years ago, philanthropist and educator Ruth Hayre guaranteed college tuition to two sixth-grade classes in North Philadelphia. Now, the 116 students in the "Tell Them We Are Rising" program are making progress with help from 125 mentors.

LAST YEAR, for Father's Day, I bought my dad a T-shirt from J.C. Penney's. I prepared waffles, eggs and bacon for breakfast and, for dinner, boiled crabs, baked potatoes and cherry-topped cheesecake, his favorite. For the evening, the movie fanatic and I ordered a horror film from On Demand. His belly was full, and he was entertained. Daddy-day was a success. He was happy. But this year I won't be able to celebrate with my tall, grand, giant dad because he is currently receiving drug- and alcohol-abuse treatment at a long-term center in New York.

DEAR HARRY: I will be 70 1/2 next year. I have two traditional IRA accounts. One is in a credit union for $70,000, and the other is in a Morgan Stanley account for $67,000. I know I must start withdrawing from my IRAs, but I have some confusion. Do I have to take money from each account? If so, how do I determine how much from each? I have no special reason for having two IRAs; I just did it over a lot of years. And how about after I take the money out? Are there any special regulations as to what I am able to do with it?

"Working your way through college" used to be a good way to get ahead. Now it is mostly an anachronism, a new study reveals. Two nonprofit education organizations say more graduates than ever are grievously in debt as they leave the groves of academe. In the past five years, students and their families accumulated more than $100 billion in debt - equal to the total amount of college debt for the previous three decades combined. And the $24 billion in loans acquired by U.S. students and their parents this year probably will double by 2000.

NEW YORK Free college tuition offered to sextuplets The parents of sextuplets born last month in a New York City suburb had one less expense to worry about - college tuition - yesterday after the State University of New York at Stony Brook offered free tuition to all six, who would graduate in the class of 2015. The offer, four years of school for six students, is worth $81,600 today, university officials said. "Now, I don't have to get that third or fourth job," joked the babies' father, Rocco Boniello, 30, a technician for the Nynex telephone company.