Tuition Should Be Lower For Science Majors, Says Florida Task Force

Hugh Pickens writes "Jordan Weissmann writes that a task force commissioned by Florida Governor Rick Scott is putting the finishing touches on a proposal that would allow the state's public universities to charge lower tuition for studying topics thought to be in high demand among Florida employers including science, technology, engineering, and math. The hope is that by keeping certain degrees cheaper than others, Florida can encourage students into fields where it needs more talent. For some, it might seem inherently unfair to send dance majors deeper into debt just to keep tuition low for engineers, who are already poised to earn more once they graduate, but task force chair Dale Brill says tax dollars are scarce, and the public deserves the best possible return from its investment in education and that means spending more generously on the students who are most likely to help grow Florida's economy once they graduate. Brill also argues that too few young people consider their career prospects carefully when picking a major. 'We're trying to introduce some semblance of a market dynamic information in an environment where there is none,' Brill says. 'Most students couldn't tell you what they pay in tuition. In economics, pricing is all we have to determine and work out supply and demand. So, when the consumer is completely separated from the cost of a product, then the cost rises.'" Remember when everyone was supposed to become an aerospace engineer and then the industry collapsed in the early 90s?

Comments

Tuition should be lower /period/

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is a huge shock, but if you made higher education more reasonably priced, maybe we would have more reasonably priced services in fields where you have to pay 10+ years of schooling.

Re:Tuition should be lower /period/

[tilante]

While we're at it, abandoning the idea that everybody needs a college degree, and having apprenticeship programs for fields where that makes sense. Those also have worked well in Germany.

Re:Tuition should be lower /period/

[NeutronCowboy]

Just to throw a bit of rain on the parade: you can't just say "Free school for everyone!" without doing everything else that Germany is doing.
#1: University is for the brainiacs. Technical school is for mechanics and electricians. Apprenticeship is for the ones who need a job now, can hold on to a wrench and are willing to learn.
#2 Heavily subsidized child care. You can go to school and raise a family.
#3 Subsidized or communitized housing.
#4 Schools that are generally ok, but where there is little stratification. You won't get a Harvard/Stanford/MIT/Berkeley, but you also won't get University of Phoenix.

I love the German system to death, but you can't just import the tuition system into the US, and think that everything will work out the same. You need to import the attitude and the attendant support systems as well.

Grants? Scholarships?

[samazon]

Changing the cost of tuition is going to lead to some really nasty battles in the school and political systems. Easy solution: make the grants available for STEM students. My out of pocket tuition was zero because I had scholarships and grants and worked hard.

Re:Just happy to see a Republican supporting scien

[Dasuraga]

There's a difference between a free ride and a less expensive ride. Most people don't have the luxury of having their parents helping to pay, and just saying " take a loan " is what caused prices to rise as much as they have : Schools know the gov't is giving out the loans, so they raise prices without fear. Pretty much handing money over to the schools. It's hard for prices to stabilize if the consumers are given infinite buying power.

Please, stop all anti-H1B nonsense!

[dejanc]

If you want Americans to study STEM, you need to provide jobs for them. Why get a degree in engineering just to train to your H1B replacement, or to have you job offshored.

As somebody who was once an H1B (or the way I like to think of myself: a human being making his living), I noticed how recently there is a lot of anti-immigration sentiment on Slashdot. Referring to somebody by their immigration status is just not nice. It seems H1B is the new buzzword here spoken with attitude described for "Okies" in The Grapes of Wrath.

College educated people who come to USA to work really don't deserve that kind of attitude. They go there either because they like America enough or because they can't make decent living elsewhere and both causes are respectable.

I respect that you may think immigrant engineers are lowering your hourly rate and robbing you of the job you were entitled to, but please keep in mind that it's a sign of proper upbringing to value all people equally regardless of where they were born.

You just had your elections and neither one of two major presidential candidates talked in support of labor rights and collective bargaining. If these issues are not important enough for Americans, then it would be nice to refrain from bashing "H1Bs" whenever they get a chance.

It's not about political correctness, it's about politeness and respect of other human beings who want the same thing as you do: to work and be respected for who they are, regardless of where they were born. I wish all slashdotters to never be in a situation where they have to choose between their work being valued appropriately (i.e. working in a foreign country) or not being referred to by their visa code.

P.S. I apologize for using your post for this rant.

Re:Please, stop all anti-H1B nonsense!

[BVis]

I don't think people here really resent the people who come here on H1B visas, I think they resent the way the system for H1Bs is set up.

A foreign-educated engineer who comes to the USA on an H1B visa cannot be faulted for wanting to have a better standard of living than they would otherwise have access to in their native country. That's what used to be called the "American Dream"; we are, after all, a nation of immigrants. But there are problems with the system as it currently exists:

1) Employers do not pay H1B visa holders the same amount as native workers. They're supposed to, but they don't, because :
2) H1B visa holders are beholden to their employers for the opportunity to continue to live here. All employees are at a significant disadvantage to their employers in the USA, but a native worker exercising the only real right they have in employment conditions (finding another job and quitting) does not face immediate deportation. Also, employees that complain about working conditions get fired, so H1B visa holders don't complain about mistreatment, legal or otherwise. A right that you cannot assert is not a right.
3) The employer, not an impartial (government or otherwise) agency is allowed to determine what the "prevailing wage" is for a given position.
4) Enforcement of existing rules intended to protect both native workers and H1B visa holders is largely ineffective, and that's if the regulating authorities even hear about the violations; see 2) above.
5) H1B visas are intended to allow employers to hire for positions that they cannot find native workers for. However, there is significant evidence to suggest that there is no actual shortage of native workers in the fields that H1B visa holders traditionally see the most use. The truth is, that employers COULD fill these positions with native workers (as there are more than enough native workers to fill the open positions in a given field) but would rather use H1B visa holders to save money and exploit their willingness to put up with substandard treatment.
6) There is a phenomenon of foreign agencies sending workers over here to gain experience in how an American business is run, then repatriating them in order to encourage American companies to outsource to cheaper foreign labor.

Re:Please, stop all anti-H1B nonsense!

[Solandri]

tl;dr version is that the H1B program short-circuits the natural market dynamic: Shortage of engineers -> salaries for engineers increases -> more kids study to become engineers -> more engineers -> salaries for engineers decreases.

The much larger pool of foreign engineers acts like an electrical ground at a lower potential (lower salary expectation). The H1B program shorts the above system by connecting it to that ground. Perpetually low engineer salaries -> lack of incentive for native students to enter engineering fields -> lack of native engineers -> (perverse) rationale for expanding the H1B program.

People make verbal arguments which try to explain why the above doesn't happen. But if you model it as a control system it's pretty obvious what the steady state response is. Unfortunately almost none of our lawmakers have engineering backgrounds so have no clue what my previous sentence means. They get swayed by the verbal argument instead.

The one benefit the H1B program does bring is that it encourages skilled foreign workers to immigrate to the U.S. It's just that while that's a laudable goal with all other things remaining constant, it mostly defeats its own purpose if it reduces the number of native-born students entering engineering fields.

Re:Just happy to see a Republican supporting scien

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is another way the middle-class gets fucked -- I've seen it happen again and again. Poor students get help because their parents make less than a magic number of income. Richer kids don't have to worry about money cuz parents rich. But the middle-class students who are college material but unable to secure scholarships are either stuck getting loans or becoming a significant burden on their parents(who aren't doing as well as you'd think, especially in this economy of layoffs).

And yeah, perhaps a student could work a full-time shit-job while putting themselves through school and graduate late and scraping by with rote memorization and a lackluster GPA instead of really learning, burned out, and missing out on what should have been one of the fondest personal and professional experience of their lives.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:Just happy to see a Republican supporting scien

[neonKow]

If you think being poor and getting help is better than being middle-class and having loans, then you have never been poor before.

You also seem to have very little idea about how the financial aid system works. The poorer you are, the more help you get. There's no "magic number" of income below which you get a bunch of grants and above which you get none.

Re:Just happy to see a Republican supporting scien

[Type44Q]

If you think being poor and getting help is better than being middle-class and having loans, then you have never been poor before.

No, but not having the incorrect ancestry and/or not having been born a male certainly doesn't hurt.

Apparently two wrongs do make a right.

Re:Just happy to see a Republican supporting scien

[cayenne8]

Given how much of a disadvantage not being white and male start of as, I think, at the macro level, it evens out.. .maybe....

In this day in age of reverse discrimination in high gear..t.hat is simply a fallacy.

Most every grant or opportunity offered by the govt (especially the Feds) is geared to minorities and women (if you are a minority woman, you are a goldmine).

Take a look at Federal Contracting. About the only way to land one, is to be a minority or female.

That's why so many bigger companies, in order to land Federal contracts, will "partner" with a minority woman, or even white women owned company, to apply for the contracts.

Usually the winning minority/female owned company, is merely a front for the deal, but these days, if you are a white male owned company, you stand virtually NO chance of landing a Federal contract.

And as far as just being male....have you seen the scary number of just how badly graduation rates for males in the US has become?

We've spent so much time and effort promoting women through the school systems, that we've gone overboard, and abandoned our young men....look at the college graduating stats.

Re:Just happy to see a Republican supporting scien

[GameboyRMH]

Let me help you, some of us have no problem killing anything that is not and never was sentient. It's a very short and slippery slope from opposing abortion to opposing contraception.