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Should College Tuition Vary By Major, Based On the College's Costs For the Major? (qz.com)

Registered Coward v2 writes: Vault, in a blog post, discusses whether colleges should base tuition on the actual cost of providing the education rather than on a one-price-for-all-credits basis. Their argument is based on a Quartz article that shows engineering and science degrees cost schools a lot more than liberal arts degrees for a variety of reasons, including higher professor salaries and equipment/infrastructure costs. As a result, those majors are subsidized by the cheaper ones even though they also have the highest earnings in aggregate. The new paper on the topic estimates that it typically costs the universities more than $62,000 to educate an engineer (including professor salaries, facilities fees, and administrative costs), while an English or business major costs nearly half that. Quartz has a chart embedded in its report that shows the cost of education by major at the University of Florida. There's also another chart that shows the earnings of past graduates, up to age 45, minus the cost of each degree. According to the paper, even though it costs more for an engineering degree, it pays off.

2 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. Apparently the authors never heard of lab fees by Scareduck · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    How much in lab fees does a typical liberal arts major pay for?

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    Dog is my co-pilot.

  2. Re:No by interkin3tic · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Putting the government in the position of deciding what thought is valuable to society and what is not? Yeah, that sounds like a GREEEEAAATTT idea.

    Sarcasm aside, I think you'll find that no matter what your political warp is, you'll find reason to disagree with which studies cost a lot and which ones don't. If you're not a fossil fuel executive, elected republican, or mindless fox-news glutton, you should be upset with marine biology, ecology, geology, and climatology courses being effectively censored due to price, which they undoubtedly will. If you're right wing at all, you'll likely object to ecofeminism courses being taught under other course names, which they will. And history and politics will be targeted by the assholes on both sides (though I think would-be tyrants have all realized by now it's the GOP that is the fertile ground and the party that doesn't ask questions). It's a testament to how far downhill slashdot has gone that your post was modded insightful.