Slashdot Mirror
Higher Tuition For an Engineering Degree
i_like_spam writes "The NYTimes is running a story about a new trend in tuition charges at public universities throughout the country. Differential pricing schemes are being implemented, whereby majors in engineering and business pay higher tuition rates than majors in arts and humanities. Last year, for instance, engineering majors at the University of Nebraska starting paying an extra $40 per credit hour. One argument in support of differential pricing is that professors in engineering and business are more expensive than in other fields. Officials at schools that are implementing differential pricing are aware of some of the downsides. A dean at Iowa State said he 'thought society was no longer looking at higher education as a common good but rather as a way for individuals to increase their earning power.' And a University of Kansas provost said, 'Where we have gone astray culturally is that we have focused almost exclusively on starting salary as an indicator of... the value of the particular major.'"
Fewer engineers and more people with degrees in Art History!
Rice was free when I got my M.S. in M.E.
The first thing that I thought of when read this story earlier, was why should engineering and science students pay more if their departments are the ones bringing in the most money from research grants from the government and industry. It seems ass-backwards to me, unless this is being done by schools without any research program to speak of. If that is the case I think they threaten to drive themselves to obsoletion. Most of these sorts of schools already provide a lower quality of education in those fields, and now they want to raise their prices as well. Good luck with that.
It's understandable in a way. It costs a lot to set up the labs and facilities needed for some specialized skills. Engineering tends to have a lot of those types of courses.
Having someone teach a class that's just chalk board and talking is a lot cheaper. especially if you can have a slave... I mean grad student, teach it.
Well, like it or not, a humanities degree is cheap compared to engineering or science. All that lab equipment (and space) costs money, not to mention the people who set it up and keep it running. I'm not saying I agree with differential pricing, I'm just pointing out the costs.
Geez, I thought the USA is a capitalist country. This is normal in the rest of the world. The law of supply and demand you know - let the free market decide the pricing...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This is already implemented at my university, SFU. You can see that the per-credit cost for Engineering is about $15 more than for other courses, although not as much as the $50 differential for business students. I personally don't really mind this as I noticed the quality of our laboratory increased once the increased fees were put in to place. We managed to replace a lot of outdated scopes and other equipment, and I'm sure the fees were at least partially to thank for that. I can see how an Engineering degree could cost more compared to, for example, a liberal arts degree. Liberal arts majors don't require access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of electronics to get their education.
I'm still at a loss to explain the difference in the cost of business credit hours, I guess they're just milking those people because they can...
"'thought society was no longer looking at higher education as a common good but rather as a way for individuals to increase their earning power.'"
Because everyone majoring in "Communications" is fulfilling a lifelong dream and not just there for the degree.
Pssh. Anybody with a library and curiosity can learn all the art history they want to, it's not particularly difficult, nor do you need to pay a college tuition to have a discussion about it.
The real shame here is that people might be dissuaded from learning something they would have a much more difficult time learning on their own, due to the cost.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
By charging less for less useful subjects such as history we will end up with a surfeit of people with the wrong degrees - people not suited to the jobs that we, as a country, need.
This is where government intervention/financial_support is needed for the long term good of society -- I can't see it happening since the payoff is way beyond the next election.
We need to more fully subsidize those degrees in fields where we're starting to lose our edge.
Think how many millions of engineers China will churn out this year. More than the total graduating class for all of the US, in every category, I'd guess.
Actually, it's not always the science and engineering programs that are the greatest draw on a school's resources. Speaking as a recent Ithaca College graduate, the communications school siphons more of the College's money than all four other schools put together, because they get immediate approval every time they want to buy a brand-new, HD, high-res, 3-chip, CCD, digital video camera that costs $65,000. Or when they want to put ten $10,000 plasmatron TVs in the building's lobby.
On the flip side, the science departments have to beg, borrow, and occasionally steal to get glassware for the labs.
In this case, having the communications students pay a premium for their degree would be a good thing, because 1) the equipment costs an arseload of money, 2) a communications degree from Ithaca is *immensely* valuable 'cause of the College's name recognition in the field and the fact that they do, in fact, run a pretty good school.
Just my $.02
A dean at Iowa State said he 'thought society was no longer looking at higher education as a common good but rather as a way for individuals to increase their earning power'.
He actually thought otherwise? He actually thought that we'd spend a small fortune and 4 years of our lives, solely because U serves as brain food and not for some serving reason?
How about this, Mr Dean: having the opportunity to shape young minds is an opportunity to cherish. In an of itself. Therefore you won't mind if we don't pay you.
Have we ever sent people to college without the expectation that the cost would be recouped by higher earning potential for the rest of the person's career?
--
$tar -xvf
Mr. Kushner said he thought society was no longer looking at higher education as a common good but rather as a way for individuals to increase their earning power.
Kushner and his ilk are probably more upset that, the more that students choose engineering and business, the less they will choose humanities and social science majors that are nothing more than indoctrinations in leftist ideology and political correctness.
The most retarded thing about this is that scientist and engineers are what we are sorely lacking in this country.
If we want to engineer a future, we should give price breaks to the harder degrees to achieve. I'm willing to bet it is the liberal art twits in charge of Universities that came up with this idea.
Stupid is as stupid does.
There is a reason why countries (like India and Brazil) try to make affordable institutes of technology.
It has paid off for such countries making them closer to become the new 1st world counties that will most influence everyones future world-wide.
Small local supply of engineers equals 3rd world nation.
To get more good engineers, you need cheap education with high standards to stay in the program.
So if the industry demands students to work with state of the art equipment, surely they can pony up the cash to support universities to pay for it? Otherwise, why should the universities cave in to their demands?
That's already the case for graduate education at most universities, engineering credit hours cost more. Substantially more in many cases.
However, that is a reflection of economic realities. School's have to be more competitive in hiring engineering faculty. Whereas for most humanities, most PhDs would like nothing more than an academic position at a university, that is simply not the case for Engineering faculty. School's not only have to compete with other education institutions, but industry as well, which can afford to pay PhDs a lot more. To a lesser extent, this also translates in the stipends a department pays engineering grad students, they get more.
Also, an engineering education costs more in terms of support. Engineering labs, equipment, etc. all add on to the cost of the education.
While I can appreciate the notion of "knowledge for knowledge's sake", which is infact how most universities started, that is not reality today. Not all disciplines are equal in economic terms. The barriers to entry into the arts and humanities are lower than the hard sciences/engineering. For proof of that, look in universities or the working world. How many people switch their majors from sciences/engineering to arts/humanities, and how many do vice-a-versa? Also, most of those who switch away from sci/eng do so because they are struggling in those fields.
Even beyond college, you often hear of a former individual with a background in sci/eng transitioning into more "soft" areas, such as policy research, K-12 teaching, art, etc. But you almost never hear of a political science graduate becoming the lead tech on an engineering project. The only place where that transition does take place is in Comp Sci, and that's because the barrier to entry there is lower than other Engr fields. And I'm not even going to count the transition to IT, because IT is different from Comp Sci, and is not a Sci/Engr domain.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
Don't worry about this... Market forces will balance it out. Universities compete for good students and students shop for the overall *best* university. If two universities offer good degree programs and one has a surcharge on the degree program they want, the students will go elsewhere.
For a good student, there are plenty of good programs out there. As far as that goes, if $40 per course is too much extra, go to a military service academy where they'll pay you to attend and guarantee you a good paying job when (if) you graduate. There are plusses and minuses to every option, and scoffing at letting students make their own choices is just ignoring reality.
Decisions like this will be self perpetuating. As the difference in cost grows between degree paths, the makeup of those groups will change dramatically.
My mom says I'm cool.
Noone cares about your major anymore, as long as you can get the connections to get a job in investment banking. No other job really appeals to American college students anymore. But then with culture being all about the bling, what do you really expect of them?
This may be biased, my sample set is only Stanford undergrads (I feel old), 3/4 of which would not consider any other job, because the pay is too low. The idea of having to work more then 5 years making a mil a year before they retire is completely absurd to them.
Yes, undergrad/masters college is 100% about the connections and the salary, duh. If you want to talk about research and education, then you're dealing in the world of PhDs and faculty - which has nothing to do with the undergrads/masters world.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Yes, yes, but apart from electricity, running water, internet connections, telephones, automobiles, computers and stable buildings, what have the engineers ever done for us?!
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Is there a shortage of lawyers? These days you've got more chance of bumping into a lawyer than getting dog shit on your shoes. Surely western society needs chemists, engineers and physicists, not lawyers, MBAs or humanities students.
It's time to reappraise a university system that has been rendered pointless by idiots; free marketeers take note!
Some of the differentials are enormous at the university I attend (pdf link):
Thankfully, I have no aspirations to become management, and I just take classes in the CS department (I'm a doctoral student in music)...
I think everybody in the USA should be a lawyer. That is probably the surest career path left in the USA.
IT is being decimated with ubber-cheap offshore labor. Engineering, accounting, and other fields could also be killed by offshore labor. Healthcare could be socialized, or regulated until it totally sucks. What can't be offshored can be killed by H1Bs, or illegal immigrants.
But, not law. Ever hear about massive layoffs of lawyers? Any lawyer, who is not completely incompetent, can probably count on a six-figure income, once he/she has a few years of experience. Lots of lawyers in the USA are millionaires. Aside from money, lawyers have all the power: Judges are lawyers, so are politicians, and so are lawyers. We live in a virtual "lawyerachracy."
There is no way lawyers could have their jobs offshored - it requires too much local knowledge (i.e. what this judge will put up with, what that judge doesn't like). And there is no way there can be too many lawyers, because lawyers cause the very problems that lawyers are paid to solve.
IMO: if you don't want to be a lawyer, be a professional litigant. In the future, everybody in the USA will "earn" their living by suing on another.
all in all, I don't see what is there to 'fix' at the education level. the education system forms the supply of the specialists, not the demand, so it merely reflects the expectations of the contemporary young people. and the fact that people do change their occupation later a lot is not very relevant here, as demand is based on the people's perception of their future career.
if there is something to be fixed then it's what the young people should expect with different educational background. good luck with trying to fix that though
This is not news if you have been to school in at least the past 10 years. It's not just engineering. Nothing to see here, move along.
As usual the price has little to do with cost to the university, but rather how much you can charge and still get customers ( i.e students ). Thus it would appear that the market value of an engineering degree is higher ( surprise surprise ) and thus we shouldn't be surprised it is more expensive to obtain one. Heck, this is even true in countries where you don't have tuition fees. The grade requirements to get in to med school is usually high, thus you need to pay quite a price ( in terms of studying rather than getting a paid job ) in order to get in. It's all about opportunity cost.
With dwindling opportunities for US citizens in engineering, flat wage growth and short career spans for those already in engineering, enrollments have dropped over the past 7 years at most engineering schools. Selectively charging more for engineering curricula is piling onto this trend.
See Jobs Update: The Death of US Engineering
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Heck, this would even have a major bonus: when I was in school I know that one english "teacher" that I had deliberately lower the grades of engineering students )including myself) as opposed to BA majors (others may well have done this too, but I only am sure of it happening from one "teacher"). By entering as a BA canidate and then switching a student would be free of this type of grade discrimination, which I expect happens much more on the "arts" side of the university.
I should also mention that I paid more than the art history majors, and that was many years ago. But it was sone in the form of "Lab Fees" for engineering courses, not based on what my major was.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What I find surprising is that some professors still don't understand that Engineering is not Arts, and its goals and values are fundamentally different. An arts education is an abstract thing, a more classical education where you learn history and discuss concepts and ideas. When you graduate you have nothing tangible that you can use for any particular job but are expected to be intelligent enough to succeed at something if you work hard. An engineering education is meant to train you to think, but also to train you in specialized tools that you will need to perform very specialized tasks. You can't build a bridge (safely) unless you understand physics and materials science and weather and economics. You can't build a car without understanding electricity and fluid dynamics and chemistry and physics. These and other engineering skills are not things most people can just pick up as they go along, and hence we have specialized schools to teach them. People study arts because they want to learn, people study engineering because they want to be engineers. It's not surprising that an engineering school has completely different needs than an arts school, and thus different tuition.
I'm majoring in both engineering and journalism (EE and newspaper, respectively), and both of those have additional per-credit-hour surcharges. I'm an in-state student, so on top of my $235.90 per credit hour, I end up paying an additional 22% per hour ($52.40) for my engineering courses or 16% more per hour ($38.70) for my journalism courses. It adds up rather quickly...
Not surprising the more money you are expected for your training the more they will charge you. Medicine, law and business (MBA) degrees all cost big bucks with little financial aid except loans. $250k in loans myself.... Thank god for 3.5% fixed interest.
Someone created the argument that if a person is taught something that can earn him a lot of money later on, he should be charged for it more. If this concerns medical science or some education involving lots of equipment this makes some sense, but you can see by the price of an MBA it is simple greed driving these price hikes. It increases social inequality and takes us back to the day where only rich people where able to afford a good education..
By charging more in fields that are generally more lucrative, this makes it possible for students in less lucrative fields to afford their education. It's not like their education will be free, but in an era where computers make possible more accurate accounting of revenue and expenditures, students should reasonably pay in proportion to the cost of the services they receive.
American higher education costs are rapidly getting out of control. Prices have been going up far faster than inflation for years. Universities have no motivation to try to control costs. Given that many students are being forced to take on massive debt in order to attend college, it's not surprising that there's more focus on starting salaries. The more interesting question is at what point will Universities price themselves out of the market?
[Insert pithy quote here]
But it is incorrect.
Without the advances we have from engineering, your "satisfying life" would revolve around getting enough to eat every day, not being eaten by other animals and keeping warm and dry enough to survive the night.
It is only once those basics are solved for most of the population that people can pursue abstract concepts such as "a satisfying life".
And solving them comes down to engineering.
Right, and guess what? People are no more satisfied now than they were during the rule of Rome.
That is due to higher expectations. Yesterday's luxuries are today's necessities.
...it's more than just art history and books. There's the graphic design major, photography, print-making, orchestra....all which requires money for computers, digital cameras, labs, recording studios, press machine, and lots of space to operate. It may not be the most notable of majors in the slashdot crowd filled with CS and engineers, but I'd say liberal arts major is as relevant as business major - not less. As for the $40 per credit hour for the sciences? I think it's a good idea. Engineering is expensive. "Lab fees" were required when I took CS classes and also when I took studio art classes at my Uni.
But please, saying that you can learn art history by reading whatever on your own free time for 'liberal arts' is like saying you can just read C++ for Dummies for 'science/ engineering'. It's an overly broad generalization.
This is normal in the rest of the world. The law of supply and demand you know - let the free market decide the pricing...
No, the US isn't a capitalist country, it hasn't been one since the 1800s. The USA is nothing like what Alexis de Tocqueville saw when he tured the USA in the 1820s/30s, which inspired him the right the book "Democracy in America" . Today the US is a corporate socialist nation.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This is a logical and agreeable surcharge. It should cost more to learn engineering than art. When you graduate, you will get a well-paying ($40k-60k) job with a degree in engineering. Liberal artists, while I can't speak directly for their ilk, get measurably less ($30k-40k).
What I don't agree with is saddling ANYBODY with the amount of debt that many graduating these days have. When I completed my undergraduate degree, I had as much debt as my annual salary. After Uncle Sam takes his 1/3 and costs of living eat up an additional statistically significant percent, the time to pay back $50k becomes an incredible burden for the current crop of graduating engineers.
While there is some hope for students entering school in the next 4 or 5 years, my overall impression is that anybody who had to stretch themselves (i.e. mommy and daddy couldn't lay down what was left after educational grants were provided) to go through a top (private) engineering program was screwing themselves financially for a number of years in the future.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
...to have "lab fees" for those courses that require expensive equipment, field trips, etc. Heck, we even had this at my high school.
Since public universities aren't businesses they shouldn't be run like this, in fact they should be run exactly the opposite. One reason for the education system is to provide knowledgeable people into the labor market.
Pricing for degrees should be based on how much society needs that degree holder.
Since scientists are very useful to society their degrees should be as low cost as possible to encourage as many as possible to take that degree.
Majors like english(non teaching) should be very expensive since they arent very useful to society as a whole and should be discouraged as much as possible.
The one labor shortage you hear about every year is teachers. Students wanting to get a teaching degree should probably have free tuition, since not only are teachers necessary but they are a direct positive feedback into the education system, so increasing the number of teachers could have exponential increases in public welfare 20 years from now.
Disclaimer: I have a computer science degree(2007) and am starting a new job in 2 weeks. I paid for my own degree at a public university.
sanitation and clean water supplies have arguably done more to extend the average lifespan than the entire field of medicine.
Has anyone thought of the obvious? Maybe it is because there are more and more students trying to enter engineering programs? And the rise in engineering salaries has to do with the economy's increasing demand for engineers? And the engineer faculty's salaries is also due to large demand for engineering PhDs?
So, maybe, just maybe the demand for engineering from industry is actually attracting more people to engineering? So maybe the market forces are at work!?
Naw, couldn't be!
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
We managed to replace a lot of outdated scopes and other equipment, and I'm sure the fees were at least partially to thank for that. I can see how an Engineering degree could cost more compared to, for example, a liberal arts degree. Liberal arts majors don't require access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of electronics to get their education.
That's easy enough to deal with, instead of raising tuition raise the lab fee, if there is no fee for classes requiring lab then institute one. That way only those students taking a lab class has to pay for the lab equipment.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And I know of a few business schools that package hardware/software into their tuition fees now as well.
In the US more and more colleges and universities are requiring freshmen students to have a laptop, so give students one and include the price in the tuition.
FalconShould there be a Law?
1. If differential pricing becomes a common practice, I think it will be a blow to America in the long run. If anything, I think this country graduates too few engineers and scientists. We need more people who spend years in college learning real world skills, how to produce value. I am not dissing humanities and social sciences here. However, I do think that we have too many people in US colleges studying social sciences, such as political science, and humanities. Most of them end up taking vanilla, dead end administrative jobs that pay half of what an engineering or science graduate can make. (Of course. What did you expect? that's about what those studies are worth in real world). The biggest reason for this is America's mediocre system of secondary education that graduates hordes of students who barely know math and are afraid of pursuing majors involving any "hard" subjects from the beginning. Raising tuition for such majors will discourage people from getting into engineering even more.
2. The problem with the runaway salaries of the business school professors was created by the business schools themselves. We know that business PhDs can get very good jobs outside of the academia but that's only a part of problem. The real problem is that the supply of business school professors is very tight. What would you expect when business schools at large research universities produce so few business PhDs? Big universities like Purdue, Michigan State, or University of Colorado at Boulder have business-related departments (such as finance or accounting) that employ dozens of professors, yet they admit about 2 doctoral student per year, and even less of those graduate 4-6 year down the road. In the end, they pay 130-140K to a fresh assistant professor. Compare this to the field of economics. Large universities admit 15-25 doctoral students of economics per year and usually at least a half of them finish the degree. The starting salary of an economics professor is about $85K.
if you think all it is is 'going to a library and reading books'.
first of all, a public library is nothing at all like a university library. there are no journals from the 1800s or newspapers from the 1600s in the public library. and a lot of cities dont have public access university libraries. they should open them up but sometimes you are SOL.
second of all, there are a lot of nuances to a lot of those old books. history is not just a bunch of facts. it is interpretation. if you go back and try to read books from the 1500s you might be a little lost, not understand what a bunch of the words mean, or why they matter. you wont understand what feudalism was like and how it might influence the various interpretations you might give to a certain, say, treatise on banking.
anyways, you wont really understand any of this until you actually go try to pass a 4000 level history class taught by a hard ass teacher.
Engineering will not give you "a satisfying life".
Engineering will allow you to purse "a satisfying life". Because engineering will free you from the daily concerns of food, shelter and clothing. Engineering will allow you to access the knowledge of other people who have pursued "a satisfying life".
Engineering does not produce culture. Engineering produces the time and security that people need to produce culture.
I have a masters degree in engineering. As a result I earn $60k a year and have little to no job mobility after getting stuck in the defense industry (and I'm one of the lucky ones).
If I had done business studies plus a two year law conversion course I would have graduated at the same time. I'd still be earning $60k 2 years out of education, but it would be about to jump past $100k/year. I'd also be living in a decent location instead of the kind of crappy industrial wastelands where they stick things that can go boom.
No matter how much you love engineering... do it as a hobby. Corporate engineering is all paperwork anyway. If you qualify as a lawyer or an accountant (which will be easy for anyone capable of passing an engineering degree) then you can afford to fund your own fun projects like blowing shit up.
I honestly don't have much respect for universities. It is not that I disagree that we need more public funding for our colleges, if not outright total funding of them, but its the very same snobs like our provost here that spend money on frivolous items for themselves and for name recognition rather than working to make education affordable to all and to avoid students from taking on loans.
When you end up paying thousands of dollars for just a few token classes taught by a run of the mill professor, you have a hard time seeing the justification for the cost. You could easily find some guy with adequate credentials in industry pay him a generous wage to come teach part-time in a rented-out civic center with far less cost.
Once you actually go over the line-item budgets that our public universities are required to publish, by law, you lose sympathy for the sniveling provosts and presidents who "regret" to raise our tuition year after year.
Students don't deserve massive debt for their education, especially when you see what its paying for.
I'm not sure that the government has the right to influence what students major in, nor do I believe that giving them this power would benefit our society.
Nonsense, this is absolutely one of the roles of government. To *influence* people to make decisions in the national interest, note "influence" not "compel". Some short term decisions may be best left to market forces and such, but some long term decisions are properly done by governments. For example a government may decide that environmental cleanup and alternative energy will be major industries in coming decades so it starts offering incentives to businesses in those fields and to students to pursue related majors.
Academia generally often is - in my opinion - rotten to the core. The entire concept of ranking competence and authority by degree is totally twisted, as I'm sure most slashdotters will agree since we're moving around in an industry in which what is taught in the academic field often is outdated and allready sub-par by real-life standards.
If this catches on, we will the academia showing it's true face a little more and that will lead to diversification in education *and* more chances for modern means of education and establishing recognition.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This is proof that the higher education system in the United States is fucked up. We should see the advantage of educating our people and not DENYING people the right to an education based on MONEY. If that means more taxes to pay for the professors and equipment, sign me up. Or move some of the taxes we already pay into this area. Or even better, how about spending some minor percentage of those TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS we're spending in Iraq on this? It just pisses me off because I know that educating our people would be more effective than kiling them in Iraq for what appears to be a lost cause.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
No. "Companies" are not "demanding" this.
That's as dumb as the "we must teach Microsoft Word in high school because that's what they'll be using at their jobs".
This is SCHOOL. You teach them how to use a SYSTEM.
If your program is working, the graduates will be able to pick up the "state of the art" tools quickly enough to keep their employers happy.
If your program is not working, all you're teaching them is how to play with that specific tool. Which will be useless when they go to work for a company that is NOT using that specific tool.
Have we ever sent people to college without the expectation that the cost would be recouped by higher earning potential for the rest of the person's career?
There's two problems with this, first by raising the cost of an education in some fields such as Engineering and Science, you're pricing low income students out of getting such an education. Secondly, I don't know where you are and how it is there, but in US the average person changes their career three tymes before they retire, so using what their major is as an indicator of how much they will earn yields false results. One of my favorite professors got his double doctorate, in mathematics and physics from Purdue. After finishing he joined the Peace Corp and was sent to Guyana to teach. When he came back he was offered some really good paying jobs, both in industry and and universities. However because he wanted to teach and not do research he took a job as a prof at the community college I went to. He didn't get paid as much though, which he was willing to forgo higher earnings in order to teach.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Many years ago we were actually paid to go to U, because the government argued that every graduate created far more jobs and net wealth than they earned. Unfortunately many of my cohort emigrated to the US (whose companies basically took advantage of the UK system). The free movement of labour has destroyed the concept of the Government using education to boost the economy directly. However, there is still the argument that improving the public school system (not, for UKers, the Public School system) reduces welfare dependency and juvenile crime. Therefore, spending money on teachers leads in the end to reduced taxes.
Pining for the fjords
Q. What's the second cheapest department to run at a University?
A. The math department -- all they need is pens, paper, and a rubbish bin.
Q. Okay, so what's the cheapest department to run?
A. The philosophy department -- all they need is the pens and paper.
Mod parent as an asshole and send a message to the NAZI pigs.
... that at least you have a free-market system that works. I'm sure that, given time, this problem will resolve itself, one way or another. The market corrects itself. I just wish we had something like this here.
Think, for a moment, of what we have to face. The top engineering examination is the IIT Joint Entrance Examination, which is the only way to gain entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology. Every year, around 1,50,000 people appear for the IIT entrance examination, straight out of high school. That was the number last time. This time, I think it's much higher. Around 4500 get selected. Everyone else to told to go screw themselves. That means that only three percent of people who appear get in.
The next big examination is the AIEEE - the All India Engineering Entrance Examination. In this system, there are a number of colleges which choose to give admission based on performance in this exam. Here, around 8,50,000 people appeared last year. Out of that, only the top 50,000 are called for "counseling" - they are the only ones who have a chance at getting a place in a college. Out of those, only the ones getting into the top five thousand get the first tier colleges and universities. That works out to about 0.588% of all people who appear. But it usually works out for people with ranks up to 25,000 - they get into a good enough place. That's 2.94% of the total who appear.
The next level are the state examinations. Through them, you can get admitted into the colleges affiliated with the local state governments. In states with good colleges, this works out for the top five to ten percent of people in the state.
If you don't get in through any of these channels, then your only option is to pay huge amounts of money to a college of your choice so that you may be included in the "discretionary" admissions that they allow.
It's not difficult to understand, economically - the government controls who and what constitutes a university and a college. It also fixes the fees of all of them. Further, it also controls admission criterion - who will get in, what the admission policies will be, and every other little detail. Now, by forcing colleges to charge students less than what it costs them to run the place, and making the deficit out of its own pocket, along with imposing the hassle of bureaucracy, it provides a very effective dis-incentive to people to start new places, new centres of higher learning, all the while making sure that the few colleges and universities who have a name are the ones who are most profitable (because they can charge arbitrary amounts for the "discretionary" admissions, and the ones with the best reputation charge the most).
What this, in effect, leads to is that there is a ridiculous amount of competition for a very small number of seats, and that the vast, vast majority (above 70%) of the nation's students are getting an education which leaves them unemployable in any meaningful way.
It also has further, unintended, and catastrophic consequences, in terms of the allocation of resources, many of which are very scarce in a country like India (forgive me if I sound like Sowell here, I'm reading his book right now).
Because of this unnatural competition (in a market system, such an artificial shortage and scarcity would not have happened, and therefore I call in unnatural), people try to find ways to game the system.
These tests follow a pattern - the AIEEE, for instance, will consist of three sections, one devoted each to Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics. The questions in each section will be multiple-choice. Now, given the general pattern, it is possible for a coaching institute, which trains students to take a specific test, to do a statistical analysis of every paper since the test's inception, and guess what will be asked next. The rich can, naturally, afford the best coaching, and thus overwhelmingly dominate the pan-Indian tests.
I remember that during my days in suc
chooses something based on what they can and cannot afford.
And for those of you who willfully go into debt to get an engineering degree, knowing the current BPO trends, only to find that your line of work has finished going overseas - remember, you asked for it.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Fuck whoever wrote that as the tagline. I'm a music education major (at Iowa State, coincidentally) and we are the major with the highest workload required to graduate of any undergrad program in the entire university. We graduate with around 31 credits more than the next major down the line; about 2 semester's worth of classes. I'm going into my fifth year in the program and have never had a semester where I took fewer than 19 credits; 20 or 21 is much more common. I'm well aware of the fact that music majors get a rep for being an easy major, but that's because the people talking about it don't know their head from a hole in the ground.
The difference can be made up in a few days or weeks at worst once you are working.
You raise some interesting points, but because your writing style clearly shows you have the mental level of a thirteen year old, I can't take you seriously. Go get another arts degree and come back when you can speak English.
Congratulations, you're completely off topic! You're rant has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this story.
As far as I know, ComS is getting new talent in at a good rate, which is good for computer engineers, but the rest of us are getting hosed. There's a huge student:faculty ratio here that bumped us from top 15 in newsweek to somewhere much lower and the University isn't helping. There's a lot of sentiment that Engineers get preferential treatment among the other students because the cost of the technology (MATLAB, Cadence, AutoCAD, etc.) is so high and it generates a lot of ill will toward engineering students. I saw this happen at work when a recent college grad tried to egg me on because I was in the Engineering cirruculum during an internship last year.
Our engineering school is slowly bleeding itself to death, and the students are not to blame. Administration needs to get off their collective burocratic assets and start hiring new people to replace the professors we are losing. I know ChemE lost/is going to lose two very good professors, Martha Russell and Robert Angelici due to retirement. They don't have anyone lined up to take their place. I related this to my French professor who told me (In French), "It is the duty of an older University to teach the students rather than to be greedy." Professors are really p!ssed off at the administration, and the administration doesn't care. I am not going to Iowa State for graduate school, I would much perfer some place like Michigan, if I do not already transfer there (will lose some credits). There, at least, they have some really good people in their program who I know of.
Not only is tuition a problem, but campus housing is terrible, our meal plans are so bad I ate out when I was on them, and I am very dissappointed with the entire system. Financially the University is throwing money at problems that the general public does not know about. I wonder if we will ever regain our position as one of the nation's best engineering schools, and I seriously doubt it now.
From what I remember from my engineering school, the professors in engineering tended to do a lot of research (with the assistance of their grad students) and brought in research grants (i.e. money) to the school. How much money are the english professors bringing in? I'd say the real situation is the *reverse* of what schools are doing. Have each department manage their own profit/loss statement. Then the engineering students will be paying lower tuition than the english majors.
Given the usual engineering/geek snobbery (I myself kind of straddle the line, ten years ago I was a double comp sci / english major) I must say I'm a little surprised not to be able to grep for and find the word "fries" anywhere in these threads.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
What about non-lab classes with expensive professors? This is exactly what is happening here, the fees aren't covering the cost of the class so they are raising the fees. Just in this case the primary cost is the staff, and the fee is the credit hour.
You mean professors actually teaching and not doing research while grad students teach?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Universities are businesses. Many of them are for-profit private corporations. But even the not-for-profit private universities seek to cover their expenses in the same way. They all sell a service, which is a mixture of certification, training, education, experience, and social prestige. Considering that engineering often pays more, it is not a surprise that universities charge more for a better service (better degree). The problem is that the value of studies in general has eroded a lot, but many universities seem to believe that they sell gold. Considering the money and time it takes to finish degrees, there are many times better ways to invest your money and time, for example in starting your own business and improving your knowledge part-time through a library rather than a university programme of study. Some universities have started to understand this situation, and offer more flexibility, but still the general situation is not very positive.
I couldn't agree more. One taxes what one wants to discourage. And the article did say "public universities", which I assume means it's getting government funding, so the government could legitimately interject some rationality here. Why not charge art majors a luxury fee and apply it to the engineering costs? If that drove a few would-be artists to become engineers because they couldn't afford the extra $40, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. (Maybe it would cause them to notice the fact that without a decent education, they can't afford $40 and that could even spur them to want to achieve more?) Just a thought.
The schools are perhaps thinking it costs more to produce engineers, but I doubt it really is. That's like a student saying it costs more to go to college than not to.
Schools exist to crank out what society needs more of. The arts are a by-product of other more applied endeavors generating the necessary affluence to afford the luxury of arts, the arts are not a life style choice that can be substituted for engineering because it's more cost-efficient and because we can outsource engineering. Nudging people by subtle economic means into areas of endeavor that may not be supported in an ever-more-competitive global economy is ill advised in the modern economy.
Plus a lot of schools get donations from alumni. The engineer alums are more likely to have money to donate than the non-engineers.
If the school is really having trouble breaking even on engineering, we should be trying as a society to come up with ways to help them, so that people (and by implication society) doesn't take the wrong path just for the sake of a momentary cash shortfall. The problem is that a person starting out in life may not yet realize the critical nature of the error they are making in choosing on the basis of price, yet some may in fact do so. (They may choose for other reasons, and that's ok. But once there's a price difference, some can't afford not to take this into account.)
When we consider the true cost of the Iraq war, the absence of many, many billions of dollars in our treasury that could have gone to infrastructure issues will one day be clearly seen as the true cost of the war: the opportunities that were no longer available to us because we depleted our nation on a fool's errand when we should have been enforcing our borders, making sure our own cities are safe, getting our national debt in check, reinforcing our internal ability to generate critical tools and technologies without relying on overseas imports that could disappear in time of war, resolving energy issues, ... and education--so that we don't have to outsource the doing of--nor in fact the very understanding of--these critical things.
To paraphrase an old proverb... "For want of $40 ... the kingdom was lost"
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
To hire a good educator for your course, you have to address the cost of making it more appealing than the alternatives (non-academic career paths). Sure, perceived longer vacations, the greater good, etc. may be appealing but they only count for so much.
A qualified expert in computer science can earn $50,000/year without breaking a sweat and, if any good, can look at around $100,000 a year fairly easily.
A qualified expert with a liberal arts degree will be happy to stop asking customers if they'd like fries with that.
Even with lab equipment etc. taken out of it, a department of 20 lecturers charging $30,000 a year is always going to cost a million a year less than a department of 20 lecturers charging $80,000 a year. 3,000 students taking 20 credits each means you need to find roughly $15/credit extra.
The question at that point is: Are they milking students or are they simply paying a competetive wage and passing that cost on?
About $40,000 dollars in tuition differential for my completely worthless degree in Astrophysics.
Science/engineering majors will be subsidizing do-nothing arts majors for the rest of their lives in the real world.
The US college system has struggled with contradictory aims since the GI bill boom:
* Providing a source for elite scientists, bureaucrats, etc. to serve specific public goods
* Educating the citizenry, as a public good for the democracy and economy
* Educating individuals who want to make themselves more marketable and prosperous
Elite research universities tend to emphasize the first two, with uniform tuition and no credit limits for undegrads and arts/sciences grad students; money-making professional programs business, law, and medicine exist in different schools with different tuitions and policies. They tend to have large endowments/tax bases to hire distinguished faculty, give financial aid and build infrastructure; and, they can draw considerable public funding for research with distinguished faculty.
OTOH, schools that rely on tuition to maintain cash flow have to worry about market forces and the monetary value of the degrees they issue.
The question raised by the article is, does this indicate a failure of US education? As it concludes, starting salary is really the only market signal for specific majors, and doesn't correlate well on the long-term. However, some people need the early cash.
Most universities try to strike a middle ground; this will continue to be a problem as long as people need money to subsist, i.e. for the foreseeable future.
That have to, there is no way to even consider what jobs will be available in ten years in the US. College students have to be able to pay back their loans and make as much as they can within a short few years after graduation or they can literally go bankrupt while still young people. They *have* to pick what *might* give them the highest paycheck immediately out of school, and even then it's a crapshoot.
The transnational industries don't care, they have no loyalty whatsoever to anything besides the shortest time period dollar they can make. They use and abuse humans at their whim with total governmental encouragement and approval. The monetary system run by the Fed and central banks and wall street mandates this, and there is no other economic system you can choose to join, short of moving out to the woods and eating nuts and berries. And even then some park ranger would arrest you if you got caught.
It's a catch 22 situation now. It's beyond dog eat dog and is doomed to collapse within a decade now is my best guess, "eating the seed corn" doesn't even come close to how horrid the system is now, it's a total race to the bottom, looting all the way, it's a total pirate-crook economy, designed to enrich a very few and leave everyone else holding worthless pieces of paper and a lot of debt..
My only hope is that enough of the scumbag black suits who are pushing this farce wind up hanging from lampposts so that the lessons learned last for more than a century. Screwing over your younger generation (and I am in the older an offer my most profuse apologies, a lot of us don't want this system but we got overtaken by the greed masters who rule now, and yes you can call it "rule", because it fits in the classical sense) so you can squeeze a few more bucks out is criminally insane and an example of government and business merging to the detriment of their own originating nation gone bad.
And I *thought* we (the generation preceding me) fought a big war over fascism-the merging of business and government-because it was stupid, evil, and a completely bad idea- "corporatism" is the economic and political system we have now, a fancy way of saying fascism- but apparently as long as it isn't called that, the same exact styled system is "OK". Freaking stupid greedy idiots.
And before any of the wall street shilling swine chime in, because I know they will, don't you dare call this economy "great", it's a totally hedged, leveraged and multiple overlapping bubbles economy based on irrational and criminal inflation of the money supply and enriching the middleman skimmers and law manipulators. It has nothing to do with actual produced wealth and sound and practical business, it's a pure corporate looter economy hidden behind smoke and mirrors busywork paper financial "products" and just a ton of outright lies, the biggest lie being their always claiming debt is some sort of tangible net positive "product", and with global monopolies and cartels looming ever closer with every merger.
For young people, the best advice is learn what you can and get out of debt as fast as possible out of school and get into some sort of cheap home ownership (I mean base entry level cheap) and get it paid off, THEN go about expanding your intellectual horizons. You have your entire life now to do that. So don't waste time now fooling around. Cover your minimum basics as fast as possible because you have no idea how much worse it can get. And work really hard to abolish the Fed (we only need the treasury to issue notes based on proven productivity gains, we don't need debt to some central bank corporation) and institute a "corporate death penalty" to get these transnationals disbanded once they are known to be criminally bent, and work for an "adjusted wage", a proportion of those at the top's salary so that those at the bottom in companies hierarchy get paid proportionally, and so on, up the food chain there, not a carved in stone minimum wage, a carved in stone proportional wage to those
The University of Missouri - Rolla (Soon to be Missouri University of Science and Technology) is doing the same thing. All engineering have an associated $50/credit-hr "lab fee". The official statement is that this is to defray costs of materials used in class. However, there is word of other departments such as physics, math, and computer science adding a similar fee to their classes. This appears to be a move toward increasing tuition with out calling it a tuition increase.
... graduated from Yale in 1968 with a B.A. in HistoryReagan earned a BA degree in 1932 from Eureka (Ill.) College, where a photographic memory aided in his studies and in debating and college theatricals.
OTH, the last president to keep us out of war was Jimmy Carter:
received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946...graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, In fact, you will find that most presidents that kept us out of war had really served in the military (not fake like W), and typically had a science/engineering degree.
As to lack of books, well, a simple Google once in a while would work just as well for you. You may find out more than you think.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't think you understand the cost. I am in the University of Nebraska's engineering program and it is an extra $40 per credit hour, not course. So take the average load of 16 hours times $40 and that is $640 extra per semester. Over eight semesters that is $5120. So it is not just some $40 that students here complain about.
"...that one in 10,000 engineer/scientist that will make a huge difference in the world, will come to the US for education."
A very foolish thing to do. A non-US citizen pays a lot for tuition in the US -- more than a non-US citizen in Canada, the UK, France, or many other EU countries. Countries with universities like UBC, Waterloo, Cambridge, Oxford, or Ecole Polytechnique.
What does MIT have over these schools? Higher tuition in a politically backwards country which lacks such modern amenities as socialized health care. The US is a good 200-350 years backwards compared to the rest of the countries mentioned in social policy and foreign policy. So why would a Chinese foreign national go to a place which has hated the People's Republic of China for the majority of the 20th century, and also costs more, with more restrictive laws about research (EG: stem-cells, reverse engineering, etc)?
Oh, right, Hollywood movies. That must be it -- because those are the only places where these giant differences are glossed over for the American public.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
In regard to the tuition increases, I think that it is, for the most part, very necessary for universities to keep getting their fair share of top-rate students and not let *all* of them go to the Ivies for their educational needs. Laboratories for engineering students as well as successful business teachers for the business students have their costs; this is probably the only fair way to justify them.
However, my big problem is with this dichotomy that Engineering/Science majors are worth more than Humanities/Art/Business/whatever students or vice versa. I highly disagree with this. As an Engineering student, I think the existence of [almost] every field is important to maintain some kind of equilibrium in this world. The engineer can construct the biggest and most beautiful buildings, but it takes an artist to suggest the most beautiful design, a businessman to get the financing for the project, a historian to recommend if the idea is good or not based on empirical evidence, and so on. I am not saying that there are fields that are reasonably difficult to justify their worth ("Media Studies," anyone?), but I do not think that it is right to automatically jump the gun and call one major "useless" relative to another because of their more immediate value.
In the end, if it is a salary-based comparison that drives these debates, I do not think that one's respective field matters in determining the level of that person's financial success. Yes, deciding to study Law, Medicine, or Engineering might give one a better chance of reaping more immediate financial benefits, but the people that usually make it to "the top" do it because of their own abilities, not because of the major they chose.
Just my 2 cents.
No one seems to be focusing on the question of how this affects the perceived value of the degrees in question. The utility of a Bachelor's Degree has changed dramatically in the past few decades. Having a high school diploma and a good interview used to be enough for lots of jobs; now you have to have a Bachelor's just to get your foot in the door. The Master's Degree is the new Bachelor's Degree. If tiered pricing goes into effect on a broad scale, liberal arts degrees will be further devalued relative to engineering or business degrees in the eyes of potential employers. Companies will start turning their noses up at anything they don't perceive as being a "serious" Bachelor's Degree. If creative outlets continue to be marginalized in the United States at this rate, all our children are going to wind up as money-grubbing, gray-suited corporate drones.
In the past the differential cost of education wasnt added to tuition, but as laboratory fees to science and engineering courses. This captures the med students and engineering major, but the the business school majors.
Hey...did you hear? English classes are cheaper now.
...that if everyone in the education sector just kept their opinions to themselves, quit trying to "save the world" with social engineering and did their FUCKING jobs, we all would be much better off.
the university I attend
I'm not going there now but I wanted to go to UMN for the Inter-College Program B.S. in the Three Area Cross-College Program. I had wanted to do CE or EE as the main area of study with the other two areas being in international business, finance, and or economics.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This obvious solution is have the pre-law students pay the increased tuition. There are more of them than any other discipline (at least, in the US), right? And more are enrolling every year. Their tuition is clearly too low.
We're going to see an Eloi caste in a fraction of the time it took to appear in his book.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Engineering, accounting, and other fields could also be killed by offshore labor.
My sister's a CPA and with some friends started an accounting business a few years ago. While some accounting jobs are being offshore outsourced it seems she's doing well. She travels across the US to meet with clients and audits as well as has inspections. From what I've heard many of those who need an accountant want one they can meet in person.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The cost of education is already climbing much too fast, but throw in added fees for having a higher paying field, and you're likely to see some engineering and business departments at community colleges will beef up their programs.
That's not to say that they will be able to compete with top notch schools in those fields, but they will hire a mediocre staff and fill the classrooms to the brim. The end result of this will be a large group of graduates with second rate education, because getting the real stuff costs too much.
I attend a private university that most would consider second-tier, and some of the students already scare me. I am in disbelief of how little it takes to get a degree in comparison to actually knowing your stuff, but I know that this is the case in many different schools.
For the sake of America's future, we need to raise the funding for higher education facilities. I am a conservative that attends a private university, so I generally am against raising taxes and I wouldn't benefit from more government aid in the public schools, but I definitely see the need.
America needs a higher quality of education for a more competitive price, it's the only way that we will keep from losing ground as a nation.
If knowing is half the battle, what is the other half?
Tuition for engineering majors at the University of Michigan has also been higher than for most of the other majors. It's been that way for at least the last nine years that I've been in school there (and yes, I've gotten more than one degree). I was always told it was to support the additional resources, such as dedicated computing centers, student project teams, and more file storage space. I avail myself of all the resources I can get my hands on, and it seems well worth the extra cost to have all my research automatically backed up. As for the business school, it is my understanding that they're putting in multimedia-laden classrooms and probably other resources. Perhaps the higher fee is also related to that? Of course, we could all be getting fleeced.
This reflects the higher value of engineering and related fields. Among other things, it means that the schools can then afford to provide a better engineering education and the infrastructure that that education needs.
The supply of colleges is fairly fixed, but population is increasing, and the social pressure to go to college is bigger than ever. The combination of the two means that demand is skyrocketing, leading to prices going up.
In the US the only reason populations is increasing is because of immigration. If there were no immigration into the US the population would be dropping. As for pressure to go to college, some of it's social but some is also economic. Jobs that don't need a college education are being offshore outsourced, OOed, with the exception of building and maintenance, such as garbage collection. However jobs requiring a college degree are also being OOed. What I've heard all too often is why should anyone major in a technical field when they'll be staring at a mountain of dept when they graduate and jobs are either being given to H1B visa holders or are being offshored. Raising the cost of getting such an education only drives another nail in the coffin.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For example at the University of Washington patent revenue is 24% of funding and grants and contracts are about 29% of revenue. Guess which departments are bringing in those patents, grants and contracts? Not art history and communications.
they charge business courses more because of 'higher future potential earnings'
looks like they want it both ways eh?
if you would read 'state of denial' by woodward you would understand bush is not an intellectual. he is not interested in books and so forth. he also has an MBA on top of his history degree (and as i said, i dont know how he got it). but bush was not the only guy in the white house. there was rumsfeld, and cheney, and plenty of others, a lot of business men and all of the oil buddies, oil men are often engineers.
ok i dont really have a lot of research to back up my claims here, im just trying to even out the Lib Arts bashing here, peopel saying stupid shit like 'history doesnt matter' and 'we dont need to study literature or art or culture'. if we knew anything aqbout vietnamese culture and history, we could have avoided millions of dead people and billions of wasted dollars. if we knew anything about iraqi culture, same thing.
reagan, despite all his flaws, and despite supporting all sorts of third world dictators, kept us out of war. the only republic president since... well, before roosevelt, to do so. ike was in korea. bush I was in kuwait. nixon promised to end the war, it took him 7 years to do pull the last troops out of vietnam. reagan oversaw 8 years of brinksmanship with the soviet union, when many hawks in his own party, not to mention the russian hawks, wanted to have a total nuclear war, him and gorby were able to hold it at bay and play out the clock until the soviet union collapsed, and nobody had to get vaporized in a holocaust. panama, grenada, central america, afghanistan, iraq/iran, sure, there was a lot of bloodshed in those places. but it was nothing like Iraq is now, and nothing to compare with vietnam. nothing.
as for jimmeh carter, zbignew brezenski basically admitted that zbignew pushed the soviets to invade afghanistan in 1979, which brought us eventually the taliban, and got Bin Ladin his start in a life of crime. carter also almost started a war with iran via his brain dead helicopter rescue mission that was a complete and utter failure. of course reagan continued the afghanistan thing, but he did not start it.
Now lets try clinton. he got us into kosovo, but that was with NATO and the UN. besides, it stopped a genocide, without having 2 million refugees and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. That is because clinton reads books. A LOT of books. he is probably the most intellectual president we have had in a long long time.
Now lets try robert s mcnamara. he fought the vietnam war the way an engineer would. slide rules, computers, matrices, numbers. too bad he missed the larger point. and he realized that later in life.
now, please, drop the sarcastic comment about bush, (which i already alluded to in my OP), and let us deal with the facts of the matter. engineers know butkus about history, sociology, language, and politics, and they like it that way... but face it... they all end up wishing they knew about it because they spew their half baked theories and display their ignorance of the past on this website all the time in the comments section.
"karl marx said this" "communism was about that" "what happened in vietnam was this" "america is not a democracy its a republic" "democracy is better than dictatorship" "linus is a benevolent dictator" blah blah blah. you cant know any of that stuff unless you study it with an analytical mind, which is what liberal arts is all about.
The reason for major bashing is that the US society rates it's citizens highly on what they do.
u e-of-an-art-education/
When introduced to someone, what is one of the first questions asked? "What do you do?" Then there is a bunch of pigeon holing done to assess whether we "fit" with this person or not.
There was a good book written by Max Depree (Leadership Is An Art) in which he tells about a worker who's funeral he went to. Turns out the worker was a very good poet as well a good wood worker. Then the question came - Was he a poet that worked in wood - or was he a wood worker who was a poet?
Another reason for major bashing is - we are a competitive society. And many see business and non-science majors as "taking the easy way out" on intellectual pursuits. It is said all the time on slashdot. I saw it myself when I was in school. These days I tell my younger family members - "Just remember than outside the university - you will be answering to the business majors so enjoy your four (or five) years on top while you have them."
In reality - we all should try to be more renaissance people who studied art AND science. The country would be far more better off.
Here is a little article I wrote about art and it's value to business:
http://interface2037.com/index.php/2007/07/18/val
It should be painfully obvious the author is Indian discussing Indian upper education. As such, it should be expected he'd use Indian Numbering rather than what you're used to.
t em
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_sys
Please take a bit to educate yourself with regards to lakh and crore so you won't mistake his approach as mistaken.
Oh... And someone please mod grandparent Informative now that I cannot.
In the old days, they disguised the differential as "laboratory and computer fees."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I spin in my office chair and go "weeee!!" as I count up the dollars I earn each minute! Ah yes, the do-nothing months of training...
I guess to make a contribution to this conversation though, most individuals who get business degrees find themselves screwed for a job and find themselves in debt because:
1. They got a degree in business but didn't have any business sense to be thrifty during college
2. They didn't meet anyone in their frat drinking games who knew a business owner who needed a manager
3. Daddy doesn't own a business nor does he know anyone who does
4. They are one of millions of graduates this year trying to fill one of thousands of available positions
5. McDonald's isn't hiring
So really, engineering is still a pretty good deal because you dont need any family background to make decent money. Essentially, as long as your willing to move where the job is, its a safe major if you have the talent. I think the irony here is all the people with business sense already know that.
And just for the record, my brother got a degree in business, realized there was no opportunity, so he went into law school and became a lawyer. So there's hope for you if you meet criteria 2 - 5.
In other countries, education is more about understanding of subjects, a higher ability to think logically, and better decision making based on logic, cause and effect, and correct information. The level of education only opens the door for the type of jobs you can apply too, the company then trains you for that job. This way, people can think instead being trained to jump through hoops for their rewards. Sooner or later we, the USA, will have to learn to do this to stay competitive. We are so behind other industrial nation its just sad, and we seem to be moving even further behind. Hopefully, we are not headed to a class war like France; where the up-class has access to better education, more control over the government, and a better live condition then the other classes.
If the USA is headed in the direction of a class war what can be done about it? Is anyone trained to think about this stuff? Are we just being distracted from it?
Since the people of the USA grand the powers to the President, Congress, and the Judicial Branch as stated by the US Constitution, it means its our responsibility to tell them what direction we want the country to move. Do we know what direction we want the country to move? Can we agree as a people on what direction we want the country to move?
Just something to think about for all you educated people out there.
They need to learn to stay off lawns, too!
(Every generation bitches about the next one at some point. Sorry, you're now officially old.)
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In the Big Ten, Minnesota is the only major school that doesn't have differential tuition for their business school. Madison is pissing off all of their business students by starting up a differential tuition this coming year. An extra $500/semester for business students, and I forget how much for people that are getting Certificates in Business (our equivalent of a Minor)
When told that the university needed to run like a business, I responded that that sounded good, as long as I got paid as if it were a business (marginal revenue product).
Universities absolutely depend upon professors that work well below their market value elsewhere (OK, this is clearer in economics, business, hard science, and engineering) because they believe in the educational system. But to be told to act like a business in performance and workload, but not in compensation . . .
I now make about three times my university salary . . .
hawk
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
A few years ago ( back in 2000 ) the University of Idaho's 'wonderful' administration attempted to impose differential fees on their Engineering students. At the time I, and many other students, fought this idea. The U of I is a public institution of the state, as such the residents of the state (and their children) should not have their education choices limited due to issues of fees.
Google for 'university of idaho differntial fees' and several archive links are available covering the debate both on campus and within the state board of education.
Why not just restrict government financial aid, merit based and otherwise, to students pursuing a useful education? I am tired of my tax dollars paying for degrees in business. Public money should not fund a degree whose only purpose is to make the holder rich; it should be used to provide a service to the public. More business and art majors are hardly a service, and this would just reroute existing funding into science and engineering.
This is sad, sad news for all people who are going to study engineering in US. We have just the opposite system. Studying is free even in university. Actually you are paid to study in university, if you do nothing but study. I think that system like this is at least in all Scandinavian countries. Yes, I am living in one of those 'dreamlands'. I am sure that ever growing greed is going to destroy USA in one way or the other.
Actually I think its due to not letting enough lions loose on the Christians in the Colosseum.
But that'd be animal cruelty.. har har.
don't give them another dime until they stop this discrimination. are we suffering from an engineering glut? every argument for the h1b says no.
The tuition for an engineering degree can be quite a bit higher than an arts degree (almost double at some places). The argument goes that us engineers need labs and equipment, leading to a higher cost for providing engineering classes. Asking everyone to pay the same means that art majors are helping to pay for lab equipment they never use. I think it's fair, like a user-fee.
is painful, please change it.
Because what this claims is that there is no gold which glitters, which is obviously false.
What it wants to say (and how the proverb is given in any other language) is that "Not all that is gold does glitter", i.e. that there are things which glitter but are mistaken to be gold (fools gold, i.e. pyrite, for example).
And this is not, as I am often accused of, a "misunderstanding of the English language" on my part, but yet another case of incorrectly usage of a word causing the English language to become less expressive, leading to the very stupidity lamented in rants about the English language:
What you can't express is very difficult to understand. In this case, you cannot express the difference between "none is" and "some are, but not all", thus reinforcing the delusion of a black and white world where either all are or none is.
Also, your attribution to Tolkien is only half correct: While he used it, he didn't come up with it. Indeed, it is a proverb known in many languages and, as noted above, put correctly in most of them - except English, where you manage to always fuck up negation.
Some links:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/notall.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_that_is_Gold_Doe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothes
In Soviet Russia, government controls corporations.
In Capitalist America, corporations control government.
I understand the sympathies of those last two individuals. College is becoming more about what major can land you the big bucks rather than education. Thus, things like engineering and the sciences are more heavily emphasized. I do feel that this is a correct move. It is seemingly a good way to prevent engineering from draining all of the school's resources. At the school I go to, the sciences use labs that cost multiples of millions of dollars, while many of the other disciplines struggle to higher enough teaching assistants.
My school (Illinois at Urbana Champaign) charges almost double for engineering students. I don't like it, but it makes sense; starting salaries are commensurate. Pity the fool, though, who gets a computer science degree only to become a social worker.
You are not considering the opportunity cost. Every hour in the classroom/lab with students is time not spent working on grants.
The supply-demand issue applies to the article: as demand increases for the skills; students are seeking the education to meet that demand. Universities respond to compeeting resources and increased demand (with limited ability to scale) by increasing price to the consumer.
To those claiming this prevents lower income students from attending, it should result in the opposite. At an artifically low tuition price the university is forced into a least-cost solution and has little flexibility to respond to consumers that need grants. At higher price points that have a larger margin over expenses, the university is in a better position to provide grants/loans/scholarships to lower income students.
So, not only will it be easier to become a teacher, but cheaper as well. Maybe I will just get a degree in education and call it a career.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
...by the end of my undergrad career, I was all too aware of the fact that the tuition from my Philosophy degree was subsidizing students who had better facilities (and I'm not talking about research...even the classrooms were far newer and better) and access to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. My classes consisted of books and teachers, yet I paid the same amount as people who required bleeding edge research technology in order to come up with pointless research projects. And for those of you who think government and private grants make that subsidization valid, I can tell you, as someone who now works for an engineering department at a major research university, that those funds get largely unused and wasted, as a significant portion of it is required to go to administration of the department and the university. I sit in a beautiful office in a modern building while faculty in the English department, for instance, are in a 150 year-old, poorly maintained structure with no air conditioning. To me, this is a huge problem. Everyone who comes to the school pays the same tuition, but are not afforded the same level of service, facilities, or opportunities. And this isn't only a problem at this particular institution, my colleagues at other schools (including Ivy League), have noticed strikingly similar issues. Ok, don't have time to reread or finish my thoughts, but you get the picture...
>Of course, this discussion missed the whole point, that now it will be even harder for someone
>who is poor to get a degree in Engineering or Business. Of course, that's the whole point, right?
>Keep the good stuff for the rich and make sure the poor stay in their place.
Anyone can go to college in the United States. Anyone. Period. All it takes is hard work and dedication. Intelligence helps, too, but you can make up for lack of it with more hard work and dedication.
It took me 17 years to finish my B.S. in Computer Science. I did it while working full time and taking classes. My classes were largely paid for by taking advantage of my employers' tuition reimbursement programs. Even Walmart has a tuition reimbursement program.
All this hand-wringing that people can't afford to go be engineers now is a bunch of bullshit, pure and simple. You want it, go and do it. Find a way. Get scholarships. Work for someone that has a tuition-reimbursement program. It can be done. I did it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The humanities have a way of describing the technical in ways that illuminate inventive possibilities. Some would argue that thought prefigures the actual well beforehand. Whether we are aware of it or not, culture works alongside science. It is easy to be dismissive of differences, but it takes a village, so to speak.
I'm leaving Switzerland tomorrow after a workshop, and must say that the sinking dollar aside, I am seeing a lot more wealth than in the past. Could it be the social approaches to education, the mixed economies of manufacturing, cultural production, and agriculture? Could I be imagining it? The average person appears to be doing quite well with August off, as well as a pretty high tax burden and expensive basic necessities.
I'll see socialized medicine and a free higher educational system in my lifetime in the States. What the causes that is the question.
The most qualified students in the fields that governments will reap the most tax revenue from and/or need for internal use should get the highest tuition subsidies. Less qualified students get less of a subsidy or prove themselves at a community college before attending a top-tier school.
The trick is to predict that tax revenue with a reasonable degree of accuracy and to identify the most qualified students. The SAT was intended to identify students who weren't "connected" and would have been overlooked by the elite schools, but it produced results in conflict with the tribalist religion known as multiculturalism and I've yet to see a superior objective replacement.
Then there's the problem of the bloated bureaucracies at most universities. There's no real free market pressure to attend to that. I'm not sure what to do here.
The fiction that all students need a university education needs to end too. College has become the new high school, at least here in America. College degrees have become an atrociously expensive substitute for the IQ tests that companies used to be allowed to give, effectively screwing the people the do-gooders claimed to help. Most people would be better off learning on the job. The apprenticeship model is vastly underrated. It would help if the government education monopoly did a better job with the K-12 set. I'd break that monopoly with a voucher system but good luck getting that reform passed.
I thought institutes of higher learning were supposed to help rid society of discrimination. Yet this is a policy that discriminates against someone outright. This should not be tolerated.
All the comments on how this will be the death of society ring hollow in the face of reality. This is nothing more than plain-old common sense.
Education is an investment in your future, and you should look at the amount you are investing and balance it against the expected return. The cost of the education should be weighted against that furure earning ability.
While there are plenty of "exceptions to the rule", a pretty cursory glance will show you that, on average, a person who studies engineering will make more money over their lifetime than someone who studies art history. This is not to pass any judgment of the societal value of an art historian versus an engineer, just the reality of the job market. If the salaries of art historians start skyrocketing, then the cost of the degree should increase as well!
And you also don't have to so a bunch of guesswork and make "dire predictions". Universities in Canada have priced tuition using a variable scale for thirty years or more, and our society seems to be running along just fine!
Here's another thing I just saw from TFA, "The University of Nebraska last year began charging engineering students a $40 premium for each hour of class credit."
That means that while the engineering student is sitting in the 4 credit hour American History class, he/she is paying $160 more than sociology major on his/her left of the football player on his/her right.
-- QED
Rates Per Credit Hour, Fall 2007, Based On Full Credit Load (12-18 Credit Hours)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Way back in '89, University of Michigan charged more for engineering than for its other programs. The price differential was essentially to support engineering's IT department and its labs of Apollos, Suns, Decs, PCs, etc.
After all, does it really make sense to force, say, the English Lit. department to pay for MENTOR Graphics when none of their students or faculty will never need to do a circuit board layout?
We're talking about $4800 dollars over the course of an entire 4 year program, so they're not exactly charging Harvard College of Law prices for an electrical engineering degree from Georgia Tech. In fact, if you buy all your textbooks at the university bookstore, you may end up spending more than $4800 right there. All this talk about a two-tiered educational system in which only the socio-economic elite can afford degrees in scientific disciplines strikes me as a tad melodramatic. In my home state, we handle the higher costs of university studies with the Hope Scholarship program, funded through a tax levied against stupid people; we call it 'the Lottery' and it's quite effective at getting your B+ average students through school.
Honestly, I don't know what the big deal is. You figure tuition is $170 x 130 credit hours for a total of $22100 total, for a degree from the University of Nebraska in 4 years. If you add in the additional moneys worst case scenario you have from UNL Comp Eng
There is a set of required core courses in computer science and engineering (29-32 credit hours), electrical engineering (28 credit hours), mathematics (23 credit hours), and physics and chemistry (13 credit hours). Students select technical electives (12 credit hours) distributed over at least three of the following five areas: system-level architecture, software systems, design implementation, communication and distributed systems, and computer engineering applications. The department maintains a list of CSCE 496 special topics selections that may be substituted as technical electives. Students must complete the humanities and social science requirements of the college (18 hours), a technical writing course, and the college's freshmen and sophomore seminars and professional ethics course.So of that, to be on the safe side, is 108 credit hours of engineering at an extra $40 per credit hour gives us a total of $4320. So, again, an aditional $1080 a year. So what. Suck it up.
College Education is a privilege not a right.
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
Yesterday's luxuries are today's necessities. And yesterday's privileges are today's demanded rights.
The mind boggles at such stupidity.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
People are no more satisfied now than they were during the rule of Rome.
That is due to higher expectations.
Higher expectations are due to ignorance. If our educational system put things in perspective, people would realize that the average "poor" American in 2007 has a higher standard of living than the aristocracy in 1607 (he or she tends to own an air conditioner, television, and maybe even a car. The most pervasive health problem among "poor" Americans is obesity.)
In the U.S., poverty (in an abosolute sense) has been eliminated, like smallpox. Failure to put things in perspective, historically and geographically, is why said elimination is not celebrated, and why poverty (in a relative sense only) persists.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If I infer correctly from the article, it's time to hold back on declaring your true major as long as possible. Take the classes you know you're going to need for the real major as "electives" while pursuing your declared major of underwater basketweaving or whatever is cheapest.
Again since I was talking about a possible government public policy aimed towards creating a more enjoyable society I'm looking at the issue from that stand point.
I don't know about you but I enjoyed Shakespeare, and Chaucer, and... And yes, I did read those in high school when I took a British Lit class. That class was one of the most enjoyable classes I took in hs. It's a tossup as to whether it or the Marine Biology class I took was more enjoyable. See, I didn't lock myself into any preconceived idea in what classes I took. Marine Bio was 1/2 year. I also took 1 1/2 years of chemistry one year of bio, and half a year of ecology for a total of 3 1/2 years of science and the hs I went to was from tenth grade to 12th and the only science requirement for graduation was a year of bio. And though there wasn't a requirement for a foreign language I took a year of German.
Then in college though I majored in Computer Engineering I also took a year of German, again, and 1 1/2 years of French. At the same tyme I also took both dance classes, for the stage, and theatre classes. Unlike some narrow minded people I believe an open mind is as useful for living as an open parachute when parachuting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I graduated from a university in 1997 with an engineering degree and I paid more all four years than any liberal arts student. It was a state school, too. Differentials have been around forever.
I never claimed that it's impossible to get an education if you are poor, just much much harder. As these changes continue, the impact on the wealthy is negligible. Not only do they have the income to pay the tuition for their kids, but they can also get loans at great rates because they have good credit scores. (It's a lot easier to borrow money if you don't actually need it.)
How is it equitable to make it significantly harder for poor people to get an advanced education than for rich people to get one? How does this help our society? Wouldn't giving everyone access to an excellent education give us the best work force? What if educational opportunities were allocated strictly on performance and willingness to work hard? What if we spent the money being poured down the drain in Iraq on educating our kids instead of getting them blown up by IEDs set up by the people they're supposed to be protecting?
The best and surest way to provide for our future is in giving our kids as good an education as we can. That means all the kids. You never know where the next Einstein is going to come from, and we could use a few of them right about now. We've got plenty of hard problems that need to be solved.
A better educated electorate wouldn't simply throw up it's hands and say, "My vote doesn't matter," and walk away knowing that doing so insures that people who work against their interests stay in power. They might even insist that Congress take action when a sitting president breaks the law. They might object when they find out their votes have been thrown away in order to swing an election in the direction the party in power wants.
We are facing difficult times ahead. We have to deal with climate change, changes in the world economy, a huge HIV epidemic in Africa, and a tremendous loss in influence due to bad decisions made by those in power. I'm sure there are plenty more that we don't even know about yet. I believe we can meet almost any challenge, but only if we are prepared and the way you prepare for the future is by educating the young.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
>Wouldn't giving everyone access to an excellent education give us the best work force?
/where/ you go to school that matters, it's the fact that you /went/ to school. Three years in the workforce and people really don't care where you went to school anymore they want to know what you have done in the workforce.
/always/ going to have that advantage, no matter /how/ equal you try and make all the educational opportunities. The rich will simply invent some other new exclusive educational club to belong to.
/volunteering/ to go get blown up and instead worked harder in school so that the military wasn't so attractive an option when they graduated high school?
In the United States, everyone gets that for their first 12 years of school. After that, if you want it, you have to go out and get it yourself. And if you have the drive, talent, and determination, you can get it. Where's the problem?
>What if educational opportunities were allocated strictly on performance and willingness to work hard?
Except for rare extremes (OK, not everybody gets to go to Harvard), they already are. For most people, it's not
I suppose for the few people who attend the very premium schools there is an "in" factor that puts you up higher on the hog starting out of school. But you know what? The rich are
>What if we spent the money being poured down the drain in Iraq on educating our kids instead of getting them blown up by IEDs set up by
>the people they're supposed to be protecting?
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but I'll bite. What if those kids stopped
The simple fact is, education is a service you buy. You pay somebody to teach you stuff. The more valuable the skill you want somebody to teach you, the more logical it is that they can demand a premium for teaching you that skill. If I'm a teacher or an institution I'm going to demand the highest fees I can charge for my services. And if my services for teaching engineering skills will fetch a higher fee than teaching basket weaving, then I should be able to charge more money.
I see it as an overall positive. It makes engineering a more valuable skill set. This will make it more attractive a skill set to acquire, which hopefully will encourage more people to pursue it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
title 9! title 9 for nerds?
womens sports don't bring in the funding yet they are made "equal" by force. perhaps under the engineering price hike logic they should have to pass on the costs of womens sports to the students instead of making the mens program pay for it.