What was going on when I was born?

AYEAR ago, after 10 months as acting president of Barnard College, Ellen V. Futter was named president of the institution, one of the nation's leading women's colleges. At the age of 32, Miss Futter, a graduate of Barnard and Columbia Law School, is one of the nation's youngest college presidents. Much of her attention during the last academic year was devoted to negotiating the future of the relationship between Barnard and Columbia University, the across-the-street neighbor with which it has long been affiliated. After Barnard and Columbia failed to agree on a formula for coeducation, the university announced that it would admit women undergraduates. In this interview with Gene I. Maeroff, an education writer for The New York Times, Miss Futter reflects on those negotiations and the implications for the future. She was first asked to identify the high points and the low points of the eventful first year of her formal presidency. A. The most interesting thing is that I'm absolutely adoring the job. My sense of the college as being first-rate and a very, very healthy institution remains as it was. We've spent the year beginning to position the college for the 80's, and that's not unusual given that the decade is projected as one that will be hard for higher education. The high point has been that we've been able to make a lot of movement in this direction.

The Digital Equipment Corporation, which is generally considered the leading American computer company after the International Business Machines Corporation, entered the personal computer business yesterday with three new products. The new computers, which will range in price from $3,500 to $5,000 and be available in the fall, are clearly aimed at the office and small-business market, rather than the home market. Analysts said the DEC computers are technically impressive and aggressively priced. The one problem DEC might have is in distribution, because the company has not had much experience selling to offices, the analysts said. The company has concentrated its sales efforts on selling to laboratories, factories and data processing departments, as well as to companies that incorporate DEC computers into other systems.

HOUSTON EVERY few days a U-2 or some other high-altitude reconnaissance plane takes off and climbs to the stratosphere. There, at 65,000 feet, almost twice as high as airliners routinely venture, the air is rarefied and largely unadulterated by terrestrial pollution, either man-made or natural. The plane begins sweeping this ethereal environment for dust. This is no ordinary dust, but cosmic dust falling in from space. It may be a kind of dander off comets or fine grains from asteroids or even, in a sense never imagined by the song writer, a little stardust. Whatever it is, cosmic dust is the object of new, systematic collections by aircraft and investigations by American scientists. For this is the only other indisputably extraterrestrial material, besides moon rocks and meteorites, that scientists have been able to seize for examination in their laboratories. From what they have learned so far scientists believe the cosmic dust is so primitive and pristine that it could be revealing of conditions at the beginning of the solar system.

''Dear Mr. Chairman,'' the letters will begin. Signed by Donald T. Regan, the Secretary of the Treasury, they will tell the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee that Congress - for the third time in 16 months - must again raise the ceiling on the national debt or the Government will be unable to pay its bills. And so will occur a new round in a dialogue between the Treasury and Congress that goes back to 1946, when Congress imposed a ''permanent'' ceiling on the Government's debt of $275 billion. The ceiling now is $1,079.8 billion and the debt, which varies from day to day, exceeds $1,000 billion, or $1 trillion.

ASERIOUS disorder of the immune system that has been known to doctors for less than a year - a disorder that appears to affect primarily male homosexuals - has now afflicted at least 335 people, of whom it has killed 136, officials of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said yesterday. Federal health officials are concerned that tens of thousands more homosexual men may be silently affected and therefore vulnerable to potentially grave ailments. Moreover, this immune-system breakdown, which has been implicated in a rare type of cancer, called Kaposi's sarcoma, and seems to invite in its wake a wide variety of serious infections and other disorders, has developed among some heterosexual women and bisexual and heterosexual men. At a recent Congressional hearing, Dr. Bruce A. Chabner of the National Cancer Institute said that the growing problem was now ''of concern to all Americans.'' The cause of the disorder is unknown. Researchers call it A.I.D., for acquired immunodeficiency disease, or GRID, for gay-related immunodeficiency. It has been reported in 20 states and seven countries. But the overwhelming majority of cases have been in New York City (158), elsewhere in New York State (10), New Jersey (14) and California (71).

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, taking the offensive in the growing international dispute over American economic policy, warned Western finance ministers today that the lower interest rates they want in the United States ''will not be a panacea for the world's economic problems.'' Speaking on the first day of the annual ministerial meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Secretary Regan said a reduction in rates in America would not necessarily reduce borrowing costs in all other Western countries or weaken the dollar in relation to the rest of the world's currencies. Mr. Regan said at a news conference afterward that ''speaker after speaker'' had complained that high United States interest rates were blocking economic recovery in the world and threatening to throw six million more people out of work in the O.E.C.D.'s 24 industrial countries, bringing their total unemployment up to 30 million by the end of the year. A Glimpse of the Future But he argued that countries with continuing high inflation and large budget deficits would find their currencies staying weak against the dollar even after American interest rates come down. Thus these countries would still be forced to maintain relatively high rates, he said.

President Reagan's proposal for cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and the United States seems as if it ought to meet the common objective of reducing fears on both sides. But it is generally agreed that it is going to be very hard to translate the proposal into an agreement. Any proposal to curb nuclear arms would run into formidable problems at this stage. The starting point is the fact that Soviet and American strengths and weaknesses are almost mirror images of each other. Thus, the United States would try to curtail Soviet advantages in land-based missiles, and the Soviet Union would seek to thwart American leads in submarines that fire ballistic missiles, the submarine-launched missiles themselves, long-range bombers and cruise missiles.

William V. Musto, a State Senator who has been a legislator since 1946 and Mayor of Union City since 1954, was sentenced today to seven years in prison for sharing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a contractor doing business in Union City. Six co-defendants were also sentenced, and all sentences were stayed, pending appeals. The 65-year-old Democratic Senator, who remained stolid before Judge H. Lee Sarokin in Federal District Court, maintained he was not guilty and said he would continue his race for Mayor. The election is Tuesday.

If the Koch administration and the Port Authority have their way, New York could become the largest coal export terminal in the country in the next five years. There are obstacles, of course. Chief among them are implacable resistance from potential neighbors and falling demand for American coal abroad. But both the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are determined to push ahead with the idea. They are convinced that the long-term prospects for coal exporting are too good to miss.

''If we lose faith in our elected and appointed officials to carry out their duties for the public good rather than their personal gain, then democracy and freedom are lost.'' - Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin. (B14:2.)

Argentine officials indicated a softening today in their terms for peace in the dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands. Gustavo Figueroa, a high official in the Foreign Ministry and a key figure in the negotiations, confirmed today that Argentina had dropped its insistence that its sovereignty be recognized before it withdraws its troops and administrators from the islands. But he also said negotiations after withdrawal should be structured to lead eventually to Argentine sovereignty. Senior officials here said that they expected a simultaneous pullback of the British fleet and that everything else was negotiable except, as one official said today, ''We will never again allow exclusive British administration of the islands.''

Consumers expanded their buying on credit in March, increasing total installment debt by $990 million, the Federal Reserve Board reported. The increase was the biggest since October and was seen by some analysts as a sign of growing consumer confidence that the recession would end soon. (Page D1.) House Democrats tentatively agreed on a budget plan that would preserve Social Security benefits but raise taxes by 50 percent over the G.O.P. plan endorsed by President Reagan. The Democrats also seek larger arms cuts than the Republicans. (A1.) Moderate G.O.P. Congressmen who backed Mr. Reagan's tax and budget bills last year say they will oppose his budget plan this year. (A17.)