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University Proposes Tuition Based On Major
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has proposed "differential tuition," a tuition structure that varies based on your major. An engineering major for example, would now pay considerably more than an English major. Liberal Arts majors would presumably get their education for free. From the article: "Charging different tuition rates for different courses of study is a growing trend among public research universities across the country. According to research by Glen Nelson, senior vice president of finance and administration for the Arizona Board of Regents, only five institutions used the practice for undergraduate students before 1988. As of this year, 57 percent of 162 public research institutions did so, including the University of Iowa and Iowa State University."
We're a country that's lagging behind on STEM (science, technical, engineering & math) education and experiencing somewhat of a shortage of people from the technical fields to fill jobs in our country because our educational system is a joke. What's the best way to go about remedying this? Why, yes, it's clearly to penalize people who want to study STEM majors by making them pay more for their education than for someone who wants a degree in comparative literature.
If you want to charge STEM majors more money for their degree, then fine, but don't go crying when you start attracting less talent to your school and your research grants start to dry up. In the short run, you'll raise a few bucks. In the long run, you're killing your most productive and profitable departments so you can have a tiny shortfall today.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
The most unfortunate thing is that poorer people will start to study, not what they are good at/like, but what they can afford...
Shouldn't they all be free or have just a symbolic fee in the public university?
Because it costs money to provide the education, even with state support.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
But perhaps those English majors can help me spell my adjectives correctly.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
That's some pretty disconnected administration there. My focus was law and philosophy, but ended up having a passion for education and am currently working in TDM.
I have a friend who majored in aeronautical engineering and he's teaching in Queens. And another friend who majored in sociology and is current in nursing school. And yet another who majored in psychology and works in an academic department wrangling university faculty.
Too many assumptions by people too far removed from reality...
If you don't have children you aren't producing workers to pay your SSI and Medicare. Shame on you, Freeloader! Better to educate people and maximize their economic productive power to keep our economy going.
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As someone in the same boat I totally disagree. I would much rather spend money on something that improves our society and economy. Education will mean those 10 offspring will not have another 10 offspring each.
Engineering and medical education takes more equipment and resources. Lab costs, technicians to run the machines, have to compete with the industry to get qualified teachers etc. So it makes sense to charge more for these disciplines. But these tend to pay more salaries to the graduates and they have an easier time getting a job. So they should be able to pay more. But it would be a better idea to charge the same tuition fees to all grads and ask for a percentage of salary earned in the first two years as additional fees. It would be a radical idea to reduce the tuition fees to bare minimum for all grads and ask for a salary sharing arrangment.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
When I was an undergrad studying computer science at the University of Michigan, they wanted me to pay the higher engineering tuition level, even though my CS degree was in the college of Literature, Science, and Arts.
Therefore, I didn't declare my major until halfway through my second-to-last semester. Why pay the higher level tuition for all the LS&A courses they required me to take as well? Engineering level tuition for French, Creative Writing, and my Race & Ethnicity Requirement? I don't think so.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
Can I make a deal with the state? You don't help me through college and I don't have to pay any extra taxes for my increased salary afterwards.
How about that?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Shouldn't we be valuing each profession in terms of its value to the whole, and discounting based on necessity. For example, we need more nurses, so nursing should be considerably less expensive than a folklore major, which contributes less to the whole.
This is not to start a flame war with folklorists, just stating that our society requires more nurses than folklorists to function. The cost benefit analysis should support producing more of what we need, rather than more of what we don't.
You'd be amazed what a great background a technical writing degree is for IT. If it's got an instruction manual, I can run it. If it doesn't have an instruction manual and I figure out how to run it, I can write an instruction manual for others to use it. This is a valuable skill and I've become a vital part of my office because it's not something the rest of the techies know how to do, let alone enjoy.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Hey, to study scientific fields, you need labs and facilities costing tens of millions of dollars, upgraded every few years. At my school (UC Santa Cruz, Literature major) we read 300 year old books outside when the professor thought the day was nice enough. Why should I pay the same $40,000 to subsidize the hugely expensive and resource-intensive programs for engineers who are gonna make ten times what I make in my life? I doubt anyone is going to switch from one of the harder majors to a 'soft' liberal arts program for basically any amount of money - I have comp sci/eng friends who paid off their student loans within a *year* because of their $60,000 out-the-door starting salary. I'm a postal subcontractor making $10 an hour 4 hours a day, and none of my friends from the major have ever made more than $40,000, and we graduated almost a decade ago. Boo fucking hoo some B.A.s have to pay a couple thousand more per year for their state-of-the-art facilities while their friends in the liberal arts use the same leftover classrooms, stages, studios, rehearsal rooms, and theaters that were there 40 years ago.
I didn't say penalize non-STEM majors with higher costs to support science and technical majors. I said keep it as is so it doesn't discourage people from studying STEM majors.
As for your second assertion that STEM students can shop around - this is true, however, this is a state university, which is generally more affordable to people who live in the state. In-state students must now choose between a more expensive state university degree or going to a private school with higher tuition rates or going to a school out-of-state. This prices poor students interested in STEM out of the market.
Plus it can be used as leverage by these students to demand more from the schools for charging more.
This isn't leverage. Students have been complaining about not getting much for the price of their tuition for decades now since school tuition started massively outpacing the rate of inflation. Universities have rarely, if ever, acquiesced to their demands. If anything, universities just wind up cutting more and more services while charging more and more in tuition.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Moving more mass requires more fuel.
Barely, for things like cars and buses. If they actually charged you more based on your weight and scaled it by increased fuel cost, the added charge would be so low that it would probably cost more to collect it than they brought in.
Now, if the bus is nearly full and a large person takes up more space, lowering the capacity of the bus, it could have an impact. But that's only applicable when the bus is nearly full, which tends to happen at predictable times, so you'd do almost as well to charge a higher bus fare during rush hour instead (easier to compute and collect).
Why are you attending a school that charges you to teach you a compulsory Race and Ethnicity class (which is bound to be 100% bullshit) when you came there for CS? It's like a car shop that requires you to buy theater tickets and sit through the performance when you come there to get you car fixed.
That's an extraordinary claim, we'd like some extraordinary evidence please. The general basis for education level yeilding a stronger economy is pretty well understood pheonomenon amongst sociologists and economonists. It also has a common sense attachment. For an example citation, I give you the oh-so-liberal wallstreet journal. The reason education, particularly science/mathematics/engineering education is important is because modern problems are quite complex and simple work can be done by machines. Now, if you honestly believe the energy crisis will never be resolved, I can understand the argument for having more unskilled labor, but basically you're decieving yourself if you think that some advanced(subject focused) understanding by our workforce won't strengthen the economy in the long run.
Free primary education created the middle class.
Free primary education created the industrial revolution
Widely available secondary education created the tech boom.
Widely available secondary education is driving China's and India's emerging position as world powers.
Your argument is generally unsupported, poorly structured, selfish, and I'd personally say (literally)astoundingly short-sighted. Please give me something less absurd than subjective annecdotes too.
Because, while you sit out on the quad exposing valuable and fragile organic matter to sunlight and moisture and engaging in mental masturbation over the use of dwarves in Spencer...
The "much more expensive" engineering students work their butts off in labs developing school-owned IP that the school can then license. The engineering grad students spend their weekends searching and applying for sweet grants, half of which goes straight into the school coffers. The engineering students will then go on to someday develop your next car, airplane, refrigerator, television, while you in 20 years will simply join your students on the quad for the sole purpose of perpetuating a useless major.
You cost less on the short term, but both to the school and to society, you net out to a loss; The engineers cost more on the short term, but actually make the school money, and improve our world (DOD contractors notwithstanding) with their careers.
Don't get me wrong, I very much value a solid liberal arts background for everyone, especially engineers; But if you don't take those underpinnings and apply them to a real set of useful skills... Why bother?
Good. Private lenders weren't doing shit to begin with. They were underwriting the loan, but then not only did they get to collect money from students, and charge them fees and interest, but they had the whole thing guaranteed by the government. There was no downside for them, and they were essentially printing money. By having the government handle the loans directly, we got rid of a middle man, and now the loans can be cheaper, more efficient, and possibly bring in some revenue.
As an English major, let me talk about practical uses of cheaper degrees.
This country needs lots of professionals in lots of areas, and many of those areas don't pay big bucks, yet the degrees cost a bundle. Thus, you wind up with people avoiding such fields. One solution to such a conundrum is to charge less for lesser paying fields. If students don't come out of school with a crushing debt, they will be more tempted to be social workers, physical therapists, teachers, or any number of less-glamorous professions.
Because he went to a University, where education is supposed to make you well-rounded.
If everyone wanted to hyper-specialize, I.T.T. Tech would be a lot more popular.
Some of us enjoyed our electives and are happy we took them.
Not really. Social Security and Medicare are funded on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning current workers pay for current benefits. Contrast this to a funded pension system, where workers/employers contribute over the course of the employee's working years, and then benefits are paid from those contributions.
His current social security and Medicare taxes go to pay for the benefits that others are currently receiving. When he retires, the benefits he receives will be paid for by whoever is working at that time. Of course, what he is entitled to receive depends on how much he contributed over his lifetime, but that's not the same as advance funding.
Of course he also fails to recognize that since the ratio of workers to beneficiaries is steadily declining, the 2.1 to 1.9 workers supporting his future benefits will need to make significantly more money in order to ensure he receives his Social Security and Medicare benefits than they do today. If all those workers are uneducated and poorly paid because he didn't to subsidize their education, it's going to be tough for them to pay his benefits.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Some of us enjoyed our electives and are happy we took them.
An "Elective" is, by definition, not "Compulsory".
"You must take N credits worth of courses from X department/dicipline" qualifies as "Elective". You can pick and choose which specific courses you take.
"You must take the 'Race and Ethnicity' course" leaves you with no choice in the matter.
I had a few choices for my "race and ethnity" core requirement at my university - and actually got a 1-2 combo punch by taking "Bible in the Black Church" and getting my multi-cultural core requirement knocked out at the same time as my religion/philosophy core requirement. That said, it was one of the most difficult classes I ever took in my life, with tons of reading, writing, and memorization. I spent three hours in the library every day for that class alone. Compared to that, some of my STEM core classes were a breeze. Really though, the issue is that everyone can benefit from the core classes, which is why they are required regardless of major. Universities are not technical schools, and they want to produce high quality graduates with a broad underlying level of cultural understanding, not robots that are living calculators or communications majors who think Africa is a country.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
You forget to mention that many of those labs and facilities are also instrumental in bringing in research monies. How much research and grant money does the Literature department bring in each year?
The engineering students will then go on to someday develop your next car, airplane, refrigerator, television, while you in 20 years will simply join your students on the quad for the sole purpose of perpetuating a useless major.
The observer bias regarding areas of education here on Slashdot is really something to behold. In general I've seen 'liberal arts' described as the study of comparative literature, shake spear, latin etc. Generally liberal arts are 'soft', do not lead to jobs, never invent anything or bring in university research. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, utter horseshit.
We shall for a moment accept the Slashdot definition of liberal arts as not including things like math and science (more accurately in academia it just means 'not vocational'), so if we just look at a 'school of arts' we have fields such as the study of all languages and linguistics (my areas), politics and international studies, criminology, design, economics, psychology, environmental and developmental studies, journalism, sociology just off the top of my head.
The amount of people studying the sorts of things which incense slashdotters so much, the Latin majors etc, is actually pretty low. Vitally, arts-type degree holders often go into jobs in the workforce which are not directly related to their degree. The idea that this made their degree useless is, well, quite depressing really. The fact is, these graduates didn't get a job in spite of their liberal arts degree, they very often get jobs because of it.
Yet there's also a very great deal of direct interest in a number of the arts fields. You may not believe it but every academic conference I go to, companies queue up to entice us to internships and employment. At a recent conference in my area, I was struck by the number of tech companies (I specifically recall Google and eBay) that had open ended invites for internships for anyone involved in the discipline, lamenting the fact there weren't more students in the field.
My field within 'arts' is extremely rich in research, practical applications, and yes, vocational opportunities. Yes, things you use on your web sites, on your phone, in your car. I was specifically drawn to it because it was apparent just how much further we had to go and how I might make a real difference. Believe it or not, modern technology doesn't just have 'science' bits under the hood, they have things that human beings control and that's where we come in.
It may bend your head to discover that a good number of people within 'liberal arts' also consider themselves scientists and very often work on issues imminently more practical than majors in mathematics. Yet despite that, you will generally not find people within the arts that are derisive about the studying the hard sciences.
Perhaps if more of you had a wider human-focused education then you would see that science does not live in a vacuum and university education does not have to be exclusively focused on the skills you need for your first job.
(The ex electronics engineer that went back to university to study 'liberal arts')
No, they didn't. They said
That is the usage of "their" that was being rightfully mocked (as well as lack of knowledge about basic economic theory).