(MONEY Magazine) – Americans can be the keenest of consumers -- dickering with car dealers, driving dozens of miles to discount outlets to save a few bucks on a Calvin Klein skirt. Yet until recently, Aeven sharp shoppers were timid and trusting when it came to choosing a college. Now that's beginning to change: ''The consumer movement is moving into the college and university world with a lot of energy,'' says Ernest L. Boyer, president of the august Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. ''My impression is that parents and students are more sophisticated and determined to get answers to questions rather than simply be in awe of the neatly manicured lawns or the record of the football team.'' Why the new attitude? For one thing, there is the shock of $20,000-a-year- and -higher costs at some schools. For another, colleges, which once enjoyed the public's confidence, have created an education marketplace where caveat emptor is the rule. As the competition for applicants has heated up, schools have done their best to camouflage their imperfections. ''It's very hard to get real information about the quality of a college,'' says Michael McPherson, an economics professor at Williams. Hard but not impossible. To be a good college consumer, all you need is the diligence and skeptical instincts you would bring to, say, the hunt for a house. This special MONEY Guide will help you learn the right way to organize your college quest, clue you in to the slick methods of college marketers, suggest the best investment strategies and give you a grasp of the baffling financial aid system. Our value rankings can help you spot schools that offer solid educations at reasonable cost. And Thomas Sowell, the noted black economist, offers his views on the problems blacks and other minorities face in finding a good fit. Here are some things to keep in mind during your search: -- Costs will keep climbing. While moderating from the punishing pace of the 1980s, tuition, room and board increases are still expected to outrun general inflation by about two percentage points a year. -- Schools are beginning to cut back. To save money, colleges are doing everything from charging for aerobics classes to eliminating whole departments. -- Applicants can be choosier. Many colleges scrambled to fill their classrooms this year, and some tried to lure stellar students with cash incentives. -- Social ills haunt the campus. Crime -- including rape -- racial tension, alcohol abuse and sexually transmitted diseases are a part of student life. The '80s were a boom decade for colleges. While there was a decline in the number of high school graduates, enrollments increased slightly, thanks in part to aggressive recruiting and a surge in adult education. That gave administrators little incentive to show restraint, and tuitions -- even at ordinary schools -- rose rapidly, sometimes at double the inflation rate. ''Schools figured if everybody else was going up 10%, than what's the point of staying at 5%?'' says David Breneman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. and a former president of Kalamazoo College. ''And lo and behold, it didn't seem to cut back enrollments.'' Tuition setting and financial aid practices did catch the attention of the Justice Department, however, which last year began an antitrust investigation of dozens of top colleges and universities. And when annual costs at about 40 of the nation's most expensive schools jumped to more than $20,000 this year, the tuition-paying public reached a new state of alarm. Says Tom Rushing, a college counselor at Isidore Newman School, a private high school in New Orleans: ''There seems to be something psychological attached to the notion of a $20,000 price tag.'' Colleges have another thing to worry about: the number of high school graduates is continuing to fall. The figure dropped from 2.8 million in 1989 to 2.6 million in 1990 and is projected to bottom out at 2.5 million in 1992 -- which will be the lowest level since 1964. Mindful of those developments, some schools are finally acting to rein in runaway costs. Earlier this year, Stanford University pledged to limit its tuition increases to one percentage point above inflation. Coming from such a prestigious institution, that declaration is expected to put pressure on colleges of all descriptions to hold down prices. ''You better believe college presidents around the country ground their teeth when they saw what Stanford was doing,'' says Robert Zemsky, director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. While no one expects tuitions to lag inflation, as they did during the '70s, experts now expect the hikes to return to the historical rate of about two percentage points above the cost of living, which would mean average annual increases of roughly 7% during the '90s. That, of course, may be of little comfort to families with small children looking ahead to six-figure bills for a bachelor's degree. But don't despair: you have several ways to cope with the high cost of learning. By beginning a savings plan when your children are young, you can build up a substantial college fund. Moreover, don't be guided by sticker price: the financial aid system can provide surprising amounts of help to families who qualify, particularly at expensive schools. And the tables starting on page 72 showcase numerous schools with reasonable tuitions of $7,000 or less that can deliver a good education. The public's growing cost-consciousness could well end up being a boon to public colleges and universities, which already attract 77% of all freshmen. Since the 1985-86 school year, applications to publics have been growing at a faster pace than applications to private institutions, and college counselors report that even prosperous families are showing more interest. ''The consumer is debating the question of value in comparison with state schools much more closely,'' says Steven Sesit, director of enrollment planning at American University. But you can't divide the world of higher education neatly into ''public'' and ''private.'' In both categories, the range in quality and size of schools is vast. Yes, many publics, including those with national reputations, like the University of Michigan and Berkeley, are huge institutions with more than 20,000 undergraduates on a single campus. Yet there are many smaller, state- supported standouts -- like New College of the University of South Florida, the State University of New York at Geneseo and Trenton State (see page 60). At the same time, some expensive private institutions are enormous -- the University of Southern California has 15,500 undergraduates. And some, like Rice, offer excellent educations at bargain prices. Moreover, it's a mistake to base your choice on price alone. You should be trying to find a setting where your child will thrive, and that means looking at several factors. School size is one obvious issue. ''An extroverted, aggressive kid is more likely to do wonderfully at a large university,'' says Loren Pope, author of Looking Beyond the Ivy League (Penguin, $7.95). Kids who need more personal attention may fare better at a smaller school. Academic atmosphere is also important. Does your child like to compete in a pack where everyone is striving to be the best? Or will he do better in a less pressured environment? Is your child sufficiently disciplined to design her own course of study? Or does she need a more structured curriculum? After the unbridled expansion of the '80s, when money was plowed into faculty salaries and spiffy new facilities, both private and public colleges (which depend on taxpayers for much of their funding) are beginning to think about cutting back. ''The great growth period of higher education is over,'' says James Schmotter, associate dean of Cornell's business school. Stanford has vowed not to eliminate faculty positions or financial aid during its cost-control drive, preferring to reduce administrative positions and take such small steps as charging $8 a session for aerobics classes that are now free. But last year Columbia, for example, began to phase out its departments of linguistics and geography, and Washington University in St. Louis announced that it would close its sociology department. Pruning can be healthy, of course. ''More and more as a university you have to recognize that you cannot do everything well,'' says Martin H. Israel, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Washington University. But in this atmosphere, it is that much more important to investigate schools thoroughly, says S. Frederick Starr, president of Oberlin College: ''Consumers will have to be more informed about the particular strengths and weaknesses of a given school.'' To judge the quality of a school's academic offerings, you should get out of the admissions office and talk directly to students and teachers. Check the course catalogue to learn how many faculty members are assigned to the departments your child is most interested in. Do big-name professors teach only in one large lecture class a year, or do they conduct seminars? Try to learn the size of standard introductory lecture courses as well as advanced seminars, and how big a role is played by graduate teaching assistants and part-timers.

Happily, you may find that you can be choosier about schools than you could have been during the '80s. ''It's now more of a buyer's market,'' says Richard Moll, author of The Public Ivys (Penguin Books, $8.95). ''It's easier to get in than it was just a few years ago.'' When the National Association of College Admission Counselors surveyed colleges in May, the number reporting that they still had unfilled spaces in the incoming class was up 13% over the same time last year and 27% above the 1988 level. And an increasing number of schools are offering full or partial scholarships to students with outstanding records, whether or not they qualify for financial aid. The amount of merit money handed out by selective liberal arts colleges grew by 324% from 1980 to 1987 after adjusting for inflation, according to the National Institute of Independent Colleges and Universities. Schools as prestigious as the University of Chicago and Duke are doling out bucks; at Duke this year, 26 entering freshmen got non-need-based scholarships averaging $10,769 (not including additional scholarships given to residents of the Carolinas). And some well-known schools offered last-minute cash incentives. In the spring, Boston University offered $3,000 a year for four years to hundreds of undecided students with averages of B or better whom it had accepted but not given aid. And after sending out acceptances, Syracuse University offered $2,000 a year for four years to 700 students, including many undecided ones, who fell in the top 10% of its applicant pool and had not qualified for aid. Before packing your kid's bags for Harvard, though, remember that most elite universities still have more than enough eager applicants to fill their classes. And the Ivy League and some other highly selective institutions do not give out merit money, instead putting their resources into need-based aid. How can you increase your chances of getting merit money? Joseph Re, executive vice president of Octameron Associates, an educational research and publishing firm, says that you'll have a better shot at schools where your child's admissions test scores and class rank would put him or her in the top quarter of the student body. The tables in this MONEY Guide give data on the test scores and class rank of entering freshman at many of the nation's schools. For more information, consult books like The College Handbook (The College Entrance Examination Board, $17.95) and The A's and B's of Academic Scholarships (Octameron Press, P.O. Box 2748, Alexandria, Va., 22301; $6.50). Campuses today seem less and less immune to the ills of the larger world, so it is more important than ever to investigate what goes on outside as well as inside the classroom. But ferreting out the facts of campus life may be the toughest test of your consumer skills. Colleges are extremely reluctant to discuss their social problems, especially crime. Two years after a freshman at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. was murdered in her dorm room by a male student in 1986, Pennsylvania became the first state to require colleges to compile crime statistics and make them available to the public. Since then, nine other states have passed similar legislation; a bill pending in Congress would impose such rules nationwide. Meanwhile, the available numbers are chilling. One out of three college students will be a victim of crime -- ranging in seriousness from theft to rape -- while he or she is an undergraduate, according to a study by the Campus Violence Prevention Center at Towson State (part of the University of Maryland system). To gauge the safety of a campus, you should ask about the size of the security force, & whether there is shuttle bus service or security escorts to and from remote buildings and whether the dorms are locked or guarded. Intolerance is a growing concern. The National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence has counted public reports of racial harassment or violence at more than 300 colleges since 1986 and estimates that about one in five minority students nationwide has been the victim of ethnically related violence yearly over the past three years. Many bias crimes are aimed at blacks, but Hispanics, Asians, Jews and homosexuals are also targets. Drug use on campus actually seems to be declining slightly. But drinking is considered a major problem, and studies indicate that 60% to 90% of campus crime is related to alcohol use. ''There may not be more drinkers, but there's more abuse,'' says Michael Clay Smith, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Southern Mississippi and co-author of Wide Awake, A Guide to Safe Campus Living in the 1990s (Peterson's, $8.95). And inevitably, the sexually transmitted diseases running rampant through the general population are hitting college students as well. Health officials estimate that as many as 10% of all students have had an STD, as they are known. And although only a tiny fraction of college students are thought to have AIDS, safe-sex campaigns have now become commonplace on campus. When it comes to supervising the social lives of students, some administrations are reversing the hands-off policies they adopted during the 1970s and returning to a more active role, restricting drinking and, sometimes, coed living. Says John Gardner, director of the National Center for the Study of the Freshman Year Experience at the University of South Carolina: ''At some schools there's a move back to in loco parentis'' -- administrators acting like parents toward their students. But at most schools, it will be up to your child to set his or her own limits. The best way to size up the campus social scene is to have your child spend a night in a dorm; many schools will help you arrange such a visit. Are there resident advisers on hand? What are the rules on overnight visitation? Is it quiet enough to get any studying done? There's no doubt that a thorough college search requires a serious investment of time and energy. ''It's not something you do with one book, sitting down at one time,'' says James Alexander, college consultant at Highland Park High School in Illinois. But think about the kind of money you're investing -- and remember that your child will carry his college experience with him for the rest of his life. Doesn't it make sense to take a long, hard look before sending your kid off to school?