February 19, 1981

GENERAL: Spending for the fiscal year 1982, which begins Oct. 1, would be $695.5 billion, or $41.4 below the amount in the Carter budget. Receipts for that year are estimated at $650.5 billion, with a deficit of $45 billion.

In a bold move that took even Columbia Pictures by surprise, Kirk Kerkorian, the multimillionaire film executive, tentatively agreed yesterday to sign a 10-year peace pact with the giant motion picture company. The agreement in principle - expected to be signed tomorrow - would thus end a two-year battle between Columbia and Mr. Kerkorian marked by extensive litigation, deepening distrust and the prospect of a hostile takeover of Columbia by the West Coast executive who currently holds no titles in the industry despite his large investments. As part of the truce, understood to have been suggested to Columbia by a Kerkorian representative only 24 hours earlier, the film company agreed to buy back Mr. Kerkorian's 2.5 million shares in the corporation for $37.50 each, in cash, plus two-year notes paying 6 percent annual interest and redeemable for $17.50 each in 1983. Because the notes pay only 6 percent interest, Wall Street analysts valued them yesterday at between $12 and $14, giving Mr. Kerkorian a total of between $49.50 and $51.50 a share for his Columbia stock - or a minimum of $123.75 million.

The price of a college education, which hard-pressed parents have long said is going through the roof, has done just that - only there is apparently no longer a roof. As Gertrude Stein said, ''When you get there, there is no there there.'' For 1981-82 undergraduates, tuition charges alone are crashing through the $7,000 barrier for the first time. Total fees, including room and board, are not only shooting past $10,000, but also emerging strong on the other side at such pace-setting schools as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Bennington, Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford.

For all the urgent confidence in President Reagan's address to Congress tonight, his economic program is a bold yet risky venture for both the nation's economy and for the Republican Party that he led to stunning gains last November. Much attention has focused in recent days on the specific numbers and programs involved in the President's budget and tax proposals. But only now have some politicians begun to comment that the new President is staking the Republicans' future on achieving a philosophical sea change in American politics. He is bent, they say, on bringing about a watershed shift in economic thinking and in the structure of government that transcends any specific reallocations of funds.

The Conservative Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tonight withdrew its plan to close old coal mining pits. This cleared the way for the return to work by thousands of miners who had begun a widespread strike in opposition to the plan. The Government's decision to cancel its pit-closing program is viewed here as a major reversal of the tough-minded economic program that Mrs. Thatcher has pursued. Her goal has been to force reform of Britain's money-losing nationalized industries that depend on Government subsidies for survival.