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.

Comments

They already do

[damn_registrars]

When I finished my undergrad years ago I paid lab costs and other associated costs for the courses in my major that people who primarily took lecture-only courses did not have to pay.

Subsidize via Taxes

[Roger W Moore]

Not only should the costs be the same but the article nicely explains why: those getting science, engineering etc. degrees generally earn more and so will pay more tax. This extra tax should be more than enough to offset the cost of their education and is also a good way to justify why higher salaries should attract a higher rate of tax.

Re:No

[budgenator]

So I'm taking "Human Anatomy and Physiology II" in a summer session and one of the Ladies in my class has a 13 year old daughter who's too young to stay home all day on her own and way too old for daycare. The lady asks the instructor if her Daughter can sit in on the class because of the above and the Instructor agrees. In lecture she asks a few intelligent questions, in lab she dissects her fetal pig like everyone else. Eventually we come to the first hour exam, the Instructor hesitantly hands her a test and she get a C on it. At this point she's pretty much a student like everyone else, she finishes the course with a C+. The Instructor, who's the Science Dept Chairman, get her retro-actively enrolled, credits her for the course, and transfers the credit back to her middle school.

In 1980 that was pretty amazing, now most Colleges have dual enrolment programs so High School Students can get College credits before they graduate. The confidence in public education has deteriorated to the point a High School Graduate with out being able to check "Some College" on a job app is really in YMMV territory..