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

No

[The Real Dr John]

Community college and state colleges should be free, like it is in civilized countries.

Re:No

[Major Blud]

How about we first find out why college is so expensive and fix that?

If you think it's expensive now, just wait until it's free.

Re:No

[Fragnet]

I think the cost should be inversely proportional to the stupidity of the degree, and the likelihood you'll come out of the course knowing less than you did before you started it. For example a course in mathematics or physics should be free. A course in feminist dance theory or gender studies should cost at least $500,000, possibly more.

Re:No

[Nemyst]

Shifting the costs is the point here: college students are the ones least able to pay for their own education. They don't have a job yet (that's why they go to college), and unlike high school, the workload from college is often high enough that getting a part-time job would make their education and performance suffer.

Re:No

[Altus]

Yeah because its NATO operations that are costing us so much money compared to the wars we have stared all on our own, or the 6.5 trillion dollars that the Pentagon can't account for... or all the money spent on the F-35 the plane nobody wanted.

It has nothing to do with the fact that NATO is all thats standing between our presidents Dom, Master Putin, and the Scandinavian countries he really wants to invade.

Include all costs

[Anonymous Coward]

If the university has any research, the overhead from funded research will help offset the cost of undergraduate education, as well as graduate.

Then, there's the costs of athletic programs, Don't forget that, and assign it to the right departments...

Strange

[radl33t]

Yes, but how much are they enabled by non-tuition revenue? Engineering departments can pull in massive public and private research funding compared to English departments. The overhead rate at my alma matter was ~50%, straight into University coffers, "to keep the lights on." Despite the high salaries of some accomplished professors, our department was pulling in millions annually for the school that went to all sorts of education expenses (building, IT, classrooms, and of course, most of the high-flying salaries). Our department received high dollar alumni gifts that I doubt flood all departments equally.

Administrative costs

[alexo]

(including professor salaries, facilities fees, administrative costs)

Maybe it's time to take a good, hard look at those. Especially the "administrative costs".

The question is premature.

[hey!]

The first thing you have to establish is what is the basis you want to judge by: The good of society? The good of the students? The good of the faculty or the administration? The good of human knowledge as a whole? These all lead to fundamentally different ways of evaluating the question.

I should point out that not every institution of higher learning has the same purpose. A for-profit institution like University of Phoenix exists to turn its proprietors a buck. The very reason for an academic department to exist is to be a profit center, and if it can't pull its weight, either due insufficient pull (Classics) or excessive weight (engineering), it doesn't have a right to exist. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Jesuit colleges which exist to glorify God by cultivating each individual student's God-given talents.

I see no intrinsic need for all majors to cost the same. But the whether it's a good idea depends on your mission, your strategy for accomplishing it, and the resources at your disposal. It may well come down to what you can afford to do.

Re:You mean "forced to pay, whether you attend or

[The Real Dr John]

I don't have kids, but I pay taxes for other people's kids to go to grade school for free. I have paid those taxes all my life, and I get nothing for it myself. In fact, much of my property tax on my house goes to pay for local education. But I am perfectly happy with this because education should be free in a civilized society. It is too important to to make it something people have to go into debt for. If we were not spending around $600 billion a year on bombing the middle east and occupying the rest of the world with military bases, it would be very easy to make community college free for everyone.

More trades / tech schools are needed and not 4 ye

[Joe_Dragon]

More trades / tech schools are needed and they should not be locked in to the 4 year system.

You get quite a bit out of those taxes

[gwolf]

You get a better society, a society where your neighbours' kids have a better understanding of the world, a better future, better job prospects, less likelihood to rob you, and a long great etcetera.