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.'"

Comments

Re:Already done in Grad Schools and Real World

[interiot]

School's have to be ... School's not only

Sorry to nitpick, but please don't put apostrophes on plurals. (examples)

Wake up and smell the cappucino.

[Inoshiro]

"...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.