Posted on 07/05/2013 7:45:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Classes in engineering and the sciences eat up a disproportionate portion of college resources. But schools that charge students a premium to study them might be making mistake.
Imagine opening a restaurant menu and finding that every dish, from the steak frites to frisse salad, costs $14.99. It would seem odd, right? After all, buying and cooking a ribeye is more expensive than throwing some lettuce in a bowl. Charging the same for each wouldn't make sense.
Yet, that's pretty much how most colleges price their majors. Undergrads pay the same flat rate per credit no matter what they study, even though different courses can require vastly different resources to teach. Giant freshman lectures are cheaper to run per-student than intimate senior seminars, and reading-heavy majors like history are cheaper than lab-oriented disciplines like biology. At New York's state colleges, to give one real-world example, advanced engineering or hard science courses cost more than five times as much to teach than low-level psychology classes. None of this tends to be reflected on tuition bills.
Should it? Would colleges, or students, be better off if higher ed finally nixed one price fits all?
This week, University of Michigan economist Kevin Stange released a new working paper that illustrates what one of the potential downsides of doing so might be. Over the last two decades, a growing minority of schools have in fact experimented with varying tuition by major. A Cornell study (which produced the graph below) found that 41 percent of public doctoral universities have tried charging a premium for at least one program -- usually engineering, business, or nursing. Looking at a sample of these schools, Stange's paper concludes that raising the price of certain majors seems to influence what students choose to study, though not always in predictable ways.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
LOLOLOLOL! My mother used to send me a subscription to the Atlantic. I used to remove my name and dump them at the Dr’s office. hen I though about a little deeper and decided that I did not want to corrupt the minds of sick people. Now, I just dump them into the garbage.
So in reality colleges should charge English majors more.
The study of English is a perfectly honorable pursuit. It’s also a hard major if you have a department that teaches it properly.
Engineering textbooks cost $100-$350, each
English textbooks cost $19.95
A Philosophy major is a great prep for Law school. So is English.
Reduce the salaries of non-engineering professors, and then we can talk about reducing costs for non-engineering degrees.
They do. It's called a low wage and it is paid until they get smarter.
Even better; let us take the STEM courses and skip all the other worthless crap.
Salaries vary by field. They are not paid the same.
Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2010-11
http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126586/
I’m thinking “The Sewage Lagoon” would be a better name for it.
And don’t forget to pay the departmental professors by the same formula.
Other way around.
Should gouge th4e dopes who want to waste four years on worthless degrees.
If anything, they should charge English majors more than Engineering majors. Engineering majors are going to be useful members of society while English majors have a sense of superiority baked into them, study literature through anachronistic filters of political correctness and belittle as “trade school” those courses that are designed to teach marketable skills.
Why should the hard workers subsidize a self-elected leisure class?
As a history major, I’ve actually voted nay at my alma mater whenever this proposal came up. I believe that by subsidizing more useful degrees, we can encourage more folks to do them. I’m ok with paying more if it means we can better control costs for critical degrees.
I propose that faculty compensation be linked to the earnings of the average graduate of their respective programs.
Engineering students will migrate to dedicated engineering schools to get a quality education, rather than attending a place run by liberal arts subjective types.
One of our daughters chose Embry-Riddle, a university little heard of outside the aviation community. However, Embry-Riddle has a world-wide reputation in aviation. The higher private school tuition she paid has more that proved its worth by opening doors in industry and at NASA.
Our other three kids all graduated from nationally renowned universities and have done well in life. However, Embry-Riddle is the place which most impressed me as an institution of learning, HIGHER learning.
In related news, Georgia Tech has instituted an affordable, on-line masters program in computer science. http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=212951
Good engineering schools will develop efficient quality programs which meet the educational & financial needs of students & industry.
Objective standards & solutions, not the subjective liberal arts garbage.
“On time, above spec and under budget” should be their motto.
What makes you think they are not? How else could they hire anyone?
Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2010-11
http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126586/
Nearly every Engineering Professor I saw in my college had first worked in his field. Nearly all of them were registered PEs.
I don't see how a few college could possibly do this when their competition is not.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.