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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.
Community college and state colleges should be free, like it is in civilized countries.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
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...
They already charge more for Engineering degrees. It's called "lab fees" rather than tuition. Another good one is "Engineering major surcharge" that I had to pay.
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
People in technical majors are going to be subsidizing liberal arts majors the rest of their lives, why not let them subsidize technical majors while they're in college?
The word "should" in the headline seems to imply a moral judgement. I don't see a moral case here - the different colleges are free to try different pricing schemes and see what the market bears. If the market isn't healthy enough to pick and choose winners, then lets concentrate on fixing the market.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Long ago, college dorms were more like Army barracks. Now they are private apartments. Food was served in a cafeteria, and you ate what they had today. Now they are more like food courts, and require far more staff. Students expect this kind of service, and if a school doesn't upgrade, they lose students to schools that do. It's overhead that has risen the cost of education, not the cost of professors. The difference in equipment and classrooms between engineering and liberal arts is small compared to the school environment costs.
There should be exactly one deciding factor dictating whether or not you can get a degree: Your brain.
Most European countries follow that idea. My university gets stormed with new students every September and their solution was quite simple: Radical testing. 3 semesters in about 10-20% of the students remain and most of them actually finish.
If you got a LOT of people wanting a degree and you're not dependent on them paying you, you can test brutally to eliminate anyone who isn't willing to put in time and effort above and beyond anyone else, and what you get in the end, holding a degree, IS the best you could possibly get. Everyone who isn't perished.
Who said that "free" cannot end up in ruthless competition that makes any cold blooded capitalist beg for mercy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
(including professor salaries, facilities fees, administrative costs)
Maybe it's time to take a good, hard look at those. Especially the "administrative costs".
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.
If they did this then there would be free college for anyone getting any type of social justice "studies" degree....
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.
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At my university (in Canada) 20 years ago they charged different rates depending on the college offering the class. I just checked the current fees and they continue to do this. At the low end is Arts at $192 per credit unit, Computer Science is $219, Engineering is $227, Applied Music is $290, and interestingly Law is $420.
Your English classes were labor-intensive - and I also saw a basket-weaving class working particularly hard and dextrously.
I'm sure the industriousness of all participants in their respective English and basket-weaving will weigh in during their job-search to offset the fact that they pursued those majors.
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.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
More trades / tech schools are needed and they should not be locked in to the 4 year system.
Force even MORE people out of STEM, you know since we have such a glut of STEM grads... and don't have tons of companies looking to fill positions that have people retiring at a faster rate than graduates are coming.
That STEM equipment that they complain costs so much? Yeah, that's the stuff used to produce research that the schools WANT from professors. You know, to get the name of the school out, and the reason professors HAVE to publish stuff alongside teaching classes. It's just an added bonus that it can be used to teach students as well.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
The biggest problem I can see is that Universities have become status symbols for the states and the employees of the University.
The focus isn't on providing a quality education to the students of that state, but on Bling. Bigger stadiums, prestigious facility, glimmering campuses, etc. Eighty percent of the students at a university do not benefit from these things one iota.
What use is it to your average student have Nobel Prize winner at your University? They likely only "teach" one or two classes and those will be at the Graduate level. Yet the university will spend hundreds of thousands funding that professor, his graduate students, and their projects.
Look at all the other facilities that your average student never sees, enters, or otherwise benefits from.
Universities have become small kingdoms with the top and highly paid jobs being defacto patronage jobs.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I mean, I searched that entire article for any mention of 'education', 'tuition', or even 'florida' and found nothing. Did someone post the wrong URL?
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.
Eighty Percent of students switch majors at least once in the United States. The more of an obstacle you create to that, the less likely you are to have people studying what they want to study. Also, the more expensive you make it to teach chemistry or computer science, the fewer kids will take a side class in chemistry or computer science.
There would be some advantages, though. It would make it easier to take a few early, basic courses where they take one professor and have 80+ students in the class. And it would make it easier for someone to get a minimal degree in something that doesn't cost the school much to run. But that's a small set of people you're helping, at the expense of STEM education and the ability to switch majors, etc...
The best solution is probably to have a few inexpensive-degree-only schools for people who absolutely know they want to major in Shakespeare, but still keep tuition flat across majors or relatively flat at most schools.
Real lawyers write in C++
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.
Because 16 and 17 year olds are not mature enough to go away to college. Rather the standards for High schools need to be pulled up and kids need to be held back in grade till they are at the level that they can go to college without needing remedial courses.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The real answer is Baumol's Cost Disease, and it's why all services get expensive faster than overall average inflation. It's also why products get expensive slower than overall inflation. $6 T-Shirts at Sears are cheaper, inflation adjusted, than they were when I was a kid in the 70s (6 bucks today was 2 bucks in 1981 and pennies before 1974). Meanwhile, have you hired a couple of musicians for a wedding lately? Freaking expensive. Education is a service, not a product, and there have only been the slightest productivity improvements. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes for Health set the overhead rates, and they've barely changed since the early 90s. Incidentally, the number one driver of university costs has been faculty and staff health insurance - like every other labor-intensive business.
I get nothing for it myself
That is not really true. Government by mere existence protects property. People with more property use more of the government protection. I am not just talking about homes. The financial instruments you own, the retirement funds you have saved, etc are protected by government enforcing contract law and settling civil disputes. People don't write rubber checks a lot because, they are scared they will end up in jail. It makes all businesses efficient, that improves your stock market returns and improves your ability to earn.
People who earn a lot, people who own a lot, use lots of government services. They have a lot to lose, if the government falls. So they should pay lots of taxes, and do everything to improve faith in the government and make sure the government works well and works efficiently.
Denounce government corruption, inefficiency, apathy etc. But not the government itself. Fight the unreasonable levels of taxation. But don't start going around saying "all taxation is theft". Such talk is very counterproductive.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. nobody has killed you and taken your stuff
2. your savings [denominated in dollars] isn't subject to rampant inflation
3. your job exists because of a large, diverse, functional economy
4. no other country has invaded ours and destroyed our economy
If you think #1-#4 are easy, then please point me to the other country which manages all of these at lower taxes.