Hanover, New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, the smallest school in the Ivy League, will fire 60 of its 3,300 non-faculty employees after its endowment value fell 18% because of the economic meltdown.

An additional 70 employees have accepted buyouts, and 28 others will have their hours reduced.

The school will increase undergraduate tuition 4.8%, raising the total cost of attendance to $49,974 a year, starting this September.

Dartmouth joins Harvard University and Yale University among Ivy League schools in the northeastern US that are slashing budgets after fund losses.

Dartmouth plans to cut $72 million, or 10%, from its budget by 2011. The cuts include reducing compensation by $28 million through a salary freeze, and lowering construction costs by $10 million.

While Dartmouth won’t eliminate any tenure or tenure-track faculty positions, it will drop 30 to 35 classes, or less than 2% of its courses. The school also will postpone about a third of its job searches to fill open faculty positions.

Dartmouth, founded in 1769, has 5,700 undergraduate and graduate students. Princeton, the second-smallest Ivy League school, has 7,145 students.