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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.'"
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?