Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
What you are describing is unbridled free market economics, not economics. It's a common misconception that unbridled free market economics is the only kind there is, but this is not actually the case. What is being described in TFA is an incentive-based economic system, where government decides which industries are most likely to need new workers in ten years, and provides incentives for students to learn the skills they need to get jobs in those industries.
I hate to say it, but I think that a better plan would be to continue with the current system, where we don't ask the government to predict the future, and instead let students decide what to do, but make sure that whatever decision they make doesn't lock them into a career, as we currently do, by maximizing their post-college debt. The best thing to do, IOW, is to minimize the cost of making a mistake. If you get a degree in biochem, and later realize that there are far too many people with those degrees, you ought to be able to spend another couple of years in school, building on your first degree, to get a second one that's more useful.
The way it works right now, unless you have substantial financial resources, if you blow it and choose the wrong career track, you wind up waiting tables to pay off your giant student loans.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Also "google" is not a fucking verb you poncing rabbit rapist.
Of course "google" is not a fucking verb. It is a searching verb.
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.........
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'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 -----------------------------------