TUITION AT HARVARD IN TERMS OF SHOES AND SOCKS

We have three cats. It's like having children, but there's no tuition involved. ~ Ron Reagan.

Harvard tuition, shoes and socks? This inquiry is prompted by information I found when I was investigating the history of currency. One form of currency during the early days of the 13 American colonies was wheat. Many items were assigned prices in wheat (and corn) because hard currency was in short supply.

Evidently a student of Harvard in 1653, Samuel Willis, paid his tuition in wheat, not money. From this, I wanted to see what the 1653 Harvard tuition really was. Unfortunately, I could not find Harvard's tuition in 1653. But I did find the following reference to Harvard's tuition in 1700. [What's 47 years in this case, right?]

Increase Mather (President of Harvard, 1685-1701) was appointed to sanctify the office. During the Mather administration, ending in 1701, a cow was worth 30 [shillings], a Harvard tutor was valued at 50 a year. Tuition by 1700 had reached 10 shillings per quarter, or the price of a pair of shoes and two pairs of stockings.

Given this interesting basis for the cost of tuition at Harvard, I used 2 methods to see how Harvard's 1700 tuition can be compared to the present day.
First, I examined the tuition relative to the prices of shoes and stockings (socks) in 1700 and today. I found the current cost of a pair of shoes. I determined the price of shoes for the familiar 99% of men shoppers, using shoe prices at Macy's. And I determined the price of shoes for the proverbial 1% (or less) of men by searching the web for "most expensive shoes." Quite classy men's shoes at Macy's cost $318. At close to the tippy-top of the men's shoe universe is the John Lobb 2005 shoe that sells for $1,280 per pair. As incredible as it may seem, the Lobb shoes were not the most expensive listed at this site. If you have to ask, you can't… Next, I determined the cost of socks. Ralph Lauren dress socks at Macy's are $25 (for a 3 pack).  Switching to what the 0.001% wear, they are the Zimmerli 100 percent Cashmere Dress Weight Over-the-Calf socks, at $200 for one pair. And they apparently start to wear out after 6 or 7 washings, according to a reviewer. With this, I calculated the current Harvard tuition in terms of shoes and socks (S&S).
I have assumed that our current student does not attend Harvard in the summer quarter (a reasonable assumption for undergraduates). The student, perhaps Mr. Willis' great^14th grandson or granddaughter, thus goes to Harvard for three-quarters of a year. In 1700 S&S terms, the "yearly" tuition of 30 shillings is the same as 3 pairs of shoes and 6 pairs of socks. Here's the June 2013 cost for going to Harvard (in 1700) for my Macy's Man (the 99% Mr Everyman) and for my 0.001% Mr Olympus:

My Macy's Man	The 0.001 percenter (Mr Olympus)
- $954 for 3 pairs of shoes	- $3,840 for 3 pairs of shoes
-   $50 for 6 pairs of socks	- $1,200 for 6 pairs of socks
Total  $ 1,004	Total  $5,040

Unsurprisingly, going to Harvard this fall is a bit more expensive than $5,040. The actual 2013-14 Harvard tuition is $38,391. [Adding in room & board, and fees makes the total climb to $56,407 for Harvard's full-retail, one-year price of education.]

For the second approach I calculated the present worth of 30 shillings in 1700 – the Harvard tuition for a year. Using an impressive website's income approach, the economic status value of the 30s in 2011 (the most recent year available at the site) is £3,481 or $5,361 at the current exchange rate. Interestingly, this value is unexpectedly close – only 6% higher – to the Mr Olympus amount of "equivalent" shoes and socks for Harvard's tuition.
Clearly, the cost of going to Harvard has escalated enormously over time compared to S&S and present worth. This increase is due in part to the impressively rising reputation of the College since 1700. However, even the S&S that Mr Olympus would wear total less than 15% of current Harvard tuition. Conversely, you could also argue that over the past 300 years the prices of shoes and socks (even the Olympian ones) have dramatically diminished, relative to attending the pinnacle of US private colleges. I don't think it says much about productivity gains in premium higher education; even with demand far out-balancing supply.
For my Macy's man, the 2013-14 tuition would be equivalent to providing the trustees of Harvard with 109 pairs of shoes and 461 pairs of socks (assuming he allocates 90% of his funds to buying shoes and 10% to socks). For Mr Olympus, that's a mere 27 pairs of John Lobb shoes and 19 pairs of Zimmerli socks. The Trustees probably would look very good in them.

To return this discussion to my history of currency assessment, the current Harvard tuition would require either Macy's Man or Mr Olympus to offer the Trustees 4,488 bushels of wheat; that's a whole lot more than Samuel Willis probably did. The shoes and socks might be a much more favorable offer for today's student.
Postscript for 2014-15 Harvard costs. For an up-to-date perspective, the 2014-15 full-retail costs for Harvard tuition and fees, room & board are $58,607, an increase of almost 4% since 2013. Converting this impressive sum to bushels of wheat (and using a recent and much lower price of wheat), you'd need to offer Harvard the grand total of 10,666 bushels, which is 320 tons of wheat! That's an astonishing amount of wheat for a single year of tippy-top education. Good thing we grew out of our wheat-as-currency habit. Too bad it's $58,607; and remember, many Harvard undergraduates receive financial aid one way or another from Harvard's 2014 endowment (still ranked 1^st in the nation) at $36.4 billion.