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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?
[looking around nervously] Hush! No one tell him that the college biology departments are still teaching evolution.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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.
You'd be surprised how many Republican-leaning voters are not social conservatives at all...I'd say 1/3rd of the total...hence the mediocre showing for deeply religious candidates :D
That being said, I paid my blood and my first born, thank you very much, and I don't support the next generation getting the free ride, particularly for students who are the most likely to have no trouble paying their loans back! This is silly popularism striking again.
The real path to male liberation
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.
I have the hiccups.
Shouldn't schools charge more for degrees that cost more? Science requires expensive labs.
Now if institutions, both public and private, want to subsidize those costs, that would seem to be a more economics-based approach.
Great idea. Wrong implementation. There are many pitfalls with making science degrees cheaper, like for example what happens when you switch majors?
The best implementation for this is to leave tuition prices alone and reward students who graduate with a degree in a preferred field and who then go on to work in that field with loan forgiveness. So for instance, if you get a CS degree from the University of Central Florida (like I did in '91), every year you work in the CS field you would fill out a form and the government would pay off a certain dollar amount of your student loans, up to a prescribed maximum. Say for instance they pay off $2500 a year in loans for 10 years.
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.
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.
Did he just say they were trying to introduce "market dynamics" by artificially tinkering with tuitions?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I agree. What we should do instead is make college educations affordable for all.
There should be no government funding in education that's how the prices would fall, once every Jim, Tom and Sally can no longer afford going to college for a sociology major, because no bank would give them a loan to go for such a useless degree. All of a sudden without government guaranteed loans there are only people going to college that can afford it and tuitions fall in price.
As tuitions fall in price, people once again can afford college by working summer jobs as they have done for decades before government screwed it up. OTOH the banks could provide credit to people who would qualify without government guarantees. This would mean that the student would have to pay at least a portion of tuition out of pocket (like a mortgage downpayment), would have to show that he is going to be able to repay the loan with interest (by explaining why the major he is taking will allow him to do so) and banks would be interested in knowing about the progress (reassessing whether the investment is still worth it) by looking at grades and such.
The tuitions for all education would fall (especially for all the humanitarian major, because who is going to pay out of pocket or go for a non-government loan to take sociology?)
Remember, people like Carnegie, (who started working at the age of 13 for 1.25 per week and became pretty much the wealthiest human in history of this planet, with an equivalent of over 300 billion USD) huge number of people who made it big and really big didn't have higher education or even secondary education in many cases.
It's not about education anyway, your college degree will not make you Carnegie, that's not how it is done.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
By that logic you are going to find the most well-educated, hardest-working scientists in states that have been dominated by conservatives. I guess that would explain why Alabama is such a scientific powerhouse.
like for example what happens when you switch majors?
Good point. I bet everyone will be a science major for their first few semesters of gen ed stuff. Not a freshman to be seen in other majors. Of course, there will also be a lot of people suddenly switching majors after their first 2-3 semesters of cheap tuition...
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I don't support the next generation getting the free ride, particularly for students who are the most likely to have no trouble paying their loans back! This is silly popularism striking again.
The only solution I see that satisfies this belief, is a two-fold change:
1) Gov't backs loans up to different amounts based on the undergrad degree or area of study. Just pulling some numbers out of the air, say you major in liberal arts, max student loan is $40K. major in STEM, max student loan in $60K. major in something that feeds into business/law/medicine, max student loan is $80K. Grad degrees will work similarly.
People will moan and groan, but the bottom line is corporations already set the value of various degrees - it's called the average starting salaries they pay. If students on permanently on-hook for their loans (can't be shed in bankruptcy proceedings, etc.) then the natural response is to limit the loan amount based on the field of study.
2) Universities will also moan and groan, but fundamentally they aren't pricing their products fairly. Not throwing liberal arts under the bus, but every college I've heard of charges the same per credit hour, no matter what the class. Yes there are different fees for private vs public, in-state vs out-of-state, but a 3 credit history class costs the same as a 3 credit science class. Ergo, a natural change, reflecting the actual value on the degree (which is again as stated in #1, what corporations actually pay for holders of those degrees), is to charge different amount for courses. Pulling numbers out of the air again, liberal arts classes will cost $500 per credit hour, stem classes cost $800 per credit hour, whatever it works out to.
As for your attitude towards the next generation - honestly ask if your attitude scales up to serve the entire nation.
Good question!
Well, let's see... what have science majors (ie. science) done for black people? Hmmm... there's medicine (vaccinations, ER, GPs, surgery, pallative, rehabilitative, etc), agriculture (cheaper food, better selection, more nutritious produce), public infrastructure (transport, power, utilities), high tech industry supported by secondary industry supported by service industries, then there's the internet (publically accessible via libraries if not in homes), access to education (via the internet), access to a more diverse job market (via education).
Oh wait, I see now - because science and technology is developed by science majors, that means that nobody but science majors can enjoy the benefits. No... wait... actually, that's complete bullshit. Black people have benefited as much as the rest of us.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
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.
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
Do you want to lower costs, or do you want your tax dollars going to tuition for interpretive dance majors?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If Florida employers are demanding these degrees, they can pay more for holders of those degrees. Instead, this proposal allows employers to justify lower pay for holders of those subsidized degrees.
Yet another "free market" proposal from a Tea Party politician.
The economic incentive for a STEM major is STEM jobs. Full stop.
If those jobs aren't being filled, the jobs are paying too low of a rate for the market. This is a straight up manipulation of the labor supply in order to lower prices.
You've never been to Huntsville.
First of all, this isn't introducing "market forces," this is government trying to control the market. Government has proven that it is terrible at predicting the direction the market will be going in the future. It's one of the fundamental flaws of communism. Government is simply not nimble enough to respond to market forces that can easily change on a dime. Do you think that the people pushing this bill know that journalism degree holders between the age 22 and 26 have a lower unemployment rate then mechanical engineers in the same age group? It's 7.7% to 8.6%. But a law like this would attempt to steer students away from journalism and into the mechanical engineer profession without any idea of the data because a bill like this is all about encouraging the STEM fields. Whether they need it or not. The second thing is that government and elected officials, who would be making these decisions, are susceptible to "influence" by lobbying groups backed by companies who may not have the best interest of the upcoming student at heart. If you're a company that can convince schools to flood the market with engineers, for instance, then you are able to leverage lower wages for those engineers because their skill set becomes less unique in the marketplace. The net result being an influx of engineers who are more likely to be unemployed and who make less because companies can afford to pay them less.
So then gen-ed stuff should be at a lower cost... often times it is, and available thru community colleges (or renamed former community colleges).
$300 for ENC1101 at Santa Fe, vs. $600 at UF ...
Hrm...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
A lot of engineering schools have a surcharge for engineering courses to cover higher costs.
The primary reason tuition keeps going up at the STATE university I work at is that fact that the state cuts its support for higher education every damn budget cycle. Add the ever dropping state subsidy to everything else that keeps going up, like heath care coverage for employees, physical plant maintenance...but is sure ain't going onto the salaries of anyone below vice-president level.
Nope, the availability of supposed " infinite buying power." has little to do with the cost of tuition.
It is a shame that those highly paid administrators outsourced so many core functions so now we are over a barrel when Blackboard, IBM, or Oracle jack their rates through the roof at renewal time.
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.
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.
Well, I guess you have to decide what's best for you. Four or five years of fun and a pile of debt, or a more stable future which is somewhat less fun and maybe took a bit longer.
There's no point in training people in STEM jobs when as a country we're actively killing the market for STEM in the US. Students from other countries come over here for best in world education, and then leave.
The reason behind all of this is that STEM jobs are outsourced and sent overseas. Worse yet is that companies can get tax breaks for doing so!
I would buy that except that tuition has been rising faster than inflation in higher education since the late 60s/early 70s. In addition, most colleges and universities have continued to increase the number of administrative positions relative to the number of students even as budgets get tight.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There's radio ads here in California targeted at families making $75K a year or more to help their kids get onto colleges of their choice by... doing something. Not sure what. It almost sounds like PR consulting for kids so they have the right array of trendy things in high school. That actually bothers me more than tuition. With such an emphasis on extracurricular activities many universities seem to be hell bent on filtering out certain personality types when they have no damned business giving a flying fuck what I do with my own time. It's one of the few things that makes me glad *not* to be young and dealing with that bullshit.
Your labor will be devalued anyway. There will be plenty of people with your level of education throughout the world. Even if your country implements protectionist measures, it's still easier to export goods from those other countries than from yours and your labor still drops in value.
And there's inflation. I doubt aside from exceptionally skilled or lucky employees that most peoples' wages and benefits will keep up with inflation. That's the usual trick by which such things are done.
This is only going to go back to rising wages in the developed world when that massive pool of labor starts to dry up.
Right. Some of us consider learning a fond personal experience. It is also difficult to go beyond the bare minimum of education if you are working a ton of hours at some unrelated job.
Having that diversity where we CAN fund the arts is really important to my enjoyment of life, although I am employed in a math/science field. A lot of cool things happen because artists think of and create new and wonderful things, and part of developing more artists is funding a formal education for them.
Also, I think in a lot of cases, any college education at all is really helpful to people and to society, even if they don't end up making interpretive dance as their career. In any case, it's not like there are all that many interpretive dance majors to fund. How much money are you saving by selectively lowering tuitions, at the cost of further discouraging those few who do go into the major?
Science majors in high-demand fields should be given subsidized loads because they are likely to get good paying jobs and will be able to pay off the loans. What the science majors are doing is going to directly benefit themselves the most.
What we should be doing is given lower tuition to liberal arts majors that are unlikely to get good paying jobs. Their degrees benefit society (by way of having an educated, informed electorate) more than the degree holder.
Before you mod me down, realize that this is the position of (conservative/libertarian and award-winning economist) Milton Friedman.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
You'd be surprised how many Republican-leaning voters are not social conservatives at all ...I'd say 1/3rd of the total...
No, I'm just surprised at how little influence they seem to have over the party. Fiscal conservatism, that makes plenty of sense to me. Social conservatism makes absolutely no sense to me. But it's all the republicans seem to be serious about on at the national level, gay marriage and abortion. I thought after W that "Cut taxes, worry about cutting spending when it's someone else's problem" would have run it's full course. Yet even with the debt ceiling and other issues, the party wasted it in favor of attacking democrats, and the balanced budget amendment went nowhere with the GOP.
Spinners?
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.
No reason. It's illogical. One should study at maximum efficiency for 20 hours a day, meditate for the other 4, graduate, find a productive career, a suitable mate with complimentary qualities, and endure the Pon Farr every seven years.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I see that as the problem with the 'get a job' solution. If one is working while going to school, they are not able to utilize the educational experience as well as someone who can dedicate full time to it... which means one does not get as good of an education. One can make all sorts of individual oriented arguments about why this is 'ok', but at the macro level it means that we are not maximizing our industrial capability.. it means fewer skilled workers, and workers who are less skilled then they could have been, as well as workers with higher starting skills who are not as bright (and thus worse long term employees) but could afford to focus more.... thus people with more ability end up in lower positions, and that is bad for the company.
Gay marriage is a non-issue. It's fluff to make gays feel like they aren't being oppressed and are just like everyone else. I think it's a waste of time, but I am not going to cry over it one way or another
Abortion, however, is about killing humans. You may or may not feel a woman's right to choose overrides the situation, but it's a very real issue. I don't understand anyone with half a brain not being able to at least understand that you don't have to "hate women" to think that you might want to think of a better way of providing for the health and safety of the mother that doesn't require killing viable humans. The reality that unintended pregnancy does disproportionately affect women does not mean that the human produced is any less genuine. In no other situation do we accept that someone else's death is acceptable as a solution for anything other than self-defense, including severe economic or mental distress.
Also "google" is not a fucking verb you poncing rabbit rapist.
Of course "google" is not a fucking verb. It is a searching verb.
I really don't understand why this isn't the norm. With any other loan, your loan and interest rate are based on your ability to pay it back, or for the bank to repossess collateral to cover the loan. The same should be true for student loans. Choose a degree with low chances of finding a job, your loan amount goes down, and your interest rate goes up. Choose a degree in a lucrative field, and your access to money goes up, and your interest rate goes down accordingly. Receive good marks in your classes, you interest rate should go down accordingly. Get some real world work experience through internships or co-op programme, and your interest rate should drop as well. The government shouldn't be spending money on loans that have 0% chance of being paid back. The people who are good achievers shouldn't be burdened by the interest rates of those who treat college as a 4 year party.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In no other situation do we accept that someone else's death is acceptable as a solution for anything other than self-defense, including severe economic or mental distress.
Except useless wars and capital punishment. Just saying. Pro-life across the board or go home. I've heard that the GOP Right to Life starts at conception and ends at birth.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Well, that's because doing the student loans differently gets VOTES....apparently you've been missing some of the exalted leader...er...Obama's rhetoric these past couple years...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Republicans who are against abortion are almost always also against any kind of welfare or assistance program that would help the mother actually raise the child in something other than complete and abject poverty.
I'm sorry but the problem you're describing is a cultural one and not the problem with schools affirmative action. The public schools are failing everyone almost equally. Sadly, our media has made our young men great consumers, pandering to what tickles their ADHD fancies, but its not saying stay in school, get a good education, become a scientist or and engineer. Look at "Jersey Shores" the message is clear, be a big stupid mook, listen to hip hop, party and get drunk all night every night, and score as many dumb chicks as you can bag and make millions of dollars.
Don't blame girls for being more mature and responsible (its that whole parenting thing...) women know that whatever happens, when the babies come, they will be holding the bag, and so we are wired to take care of business. The only thing tying men down is culture, and our culture has gotten messed up by appealing to their bassist instincts to sell them products.
Helping the underdog isn't and will never be a bad thing. You just have to make sure that as the underdog changes, the new guy on the bottom gets a fair shot as well.
Yeah, but if you have to hold down a full time job, then your school is hurting. Worse, if you have to commute, have a relationship... you're just doomed. You should go to school when you're going to school and if you're trying to feed yourself, cloth yourself and keep a roof over your head at the same time, I can imagine the vast majority of people failing out very early in the game. This is particularly so with the insane tuitions now being charges and I don't see them going down any time in the foreseeable future.
I'd have to agree. I'd rather see the 'state' fund interpretive basket weaving and make higher education open to as many people as can hack it. Yes, there will be waste - English PhD's waiting on tables and whatnot. That's OK, there is more to life than the paycheck.
If nearly universal post secondary education does absolutely nothing other than improve the general political discourse in this country, it will be absolutely worth it (and I think there are several other important advantages). You cannot help steer this society through the 21st Century with a 14th Century mindset.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And often against providing contraception that would prevent the unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
A relative of mine who is a Mexican-American female is now a science major at [big expensive school] which encouraged her to go there and assured her that, being hispanic and female, she would be able to get financial aid.
After she got there, it turned out they didn't have any aid at all. It's now a real financial problem and she may not be able to afford next year.
Please tell me exactly where females and hispanics studying science can get financial aid.
No vague generalities, please. We've looked. What did we miss?
Germany used to have free university education and liberal financial aid, but that was back when only a few percent of Germans went to university. Back then, your primary school teachers effectively decided whether you'd be able to go to university a decade later.
Today, many German universities do charge tuition. Furthermore, most Germans don't get financial aid for living expenses. There is a student loan program, loans are partially subsidized, and many Germans are left with student loan debt.
Does the system work? A much smaller percentage of Germans are university graduates, and a much smaller percentage of secondary students enroll in college or university. And Germans adults are less educated on average than Americans.
The German system isn't bad, but I don't see any objective sense in which it is better than the US system.
Yes, Tyson is the model minority. But there are dismally few black scientists and engineers. And it's not because they're not smart or don't work hard. http://www.ronsuskind.com/articles/cat_wall_street_journal.html
It's because we've had 100 years of slavery and 100 years of a continuation of slavery in the form of Jim Crow. We still haven't recovered from that history and we have huge segregated neighborhoods where the black schools get fewer resources than white schools.
Now the Republicans are making it worse by cutting funding for elementary and high schools, cutting teacher salaries and taking away their job security. (And yes, the "moderate" Democrats, including Obama, have done the same.)
And yet women are still paid less and are poorly represented in most high paying field.
And the idea that you stand almost no chance of landing a federal contract if you are a white male owned company is pure BS. It is often touted as an excuse if someone who isn't white and male gets it, but the bulk of government money still does to companies owned by dumpy white guys.
Not sure where you are getting the idea that male graduation rates are going 'badly', unless you are specifically looking at black male graduation rates which are kinda in the crapper right now. White male ones are still pretty good. Even if they are a little higher, oh no, white males are not on top, the horror!
Actually...a lot of them, BIG ones....are targeted often as "small business" projects. If a 'small business' gets it...the project is so large that it automatically negates their eligibility for renewal when it comes around again.
So, what happens is...and minority/female owned small business 'partners' with a Lockheed or others that you mentioned, and basically is a front to apply for the contract.
The contract is won, the small minority/female business sits for the duration of the work as a figurehead, making a decent bit of money, while the bulk goes to the established behemoth company.
At the completion of the contract, the small business is brushed aside,and the cycle continues.
This type thing also happens with contracts not specifically targeted at 'small business'....they put out or partner with a small set up company that is female/minority "owned"....and get the contracts.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=student+loan+bankruptcy+law+doctors
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"that we've gone overboard, and abandoned our young men....look at the college graduating stats."
I agree up until that line. (My buds who sell to DoD have women-owned businesses for your listed reasons.)
US males have a CULTURAL problem with education, and this combines with being sold bullshit lines of study (if you are poor and go to college for anything other than marketable skills you fucked up, the few "unique snowflakes" excepted) to produce a generation of football-worshipping dumbfucks. The idealisation of the "common man" is to blame for the common man is a slug who doesn't seek to improve HIMSELF as opposed to his material condition. The result is he isn't good at improving his material condition!
This carries over into schooling. I'm taking CNC machine shop courses at my local community college. (I encourage everyone who likes to Make Stuff to do so.) The underperforming students spend much of their time bullshitting about football (and don't think my comments about the latent homosexuality of jock worship are funny...) so their performance suffers. The serious students come in early for extra lab time and excel as a result. If I come in early I don't have to wait on a mill or a lathe, but male students who really NEED the money they'd earn as machinists or operators can be found smoking and joking in the parking lot.
At least their tuition funds classes we wouldn't have otherwise. A welding instructor I worked with believed in the "ten percent rule". Ten percent of his students had the motivation and determination to excel. The rest had pulse and respiration.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The economics of college degrees has always been suspect--charging the same tuition for degrees which are valued differently in the marketplace.
OF course, subsidizing the degrees which bring in the most money to the student--science--is exactly backward but that's what you get from folks who don't understand economics (which seems to be most voters and thus most politicians).