Posted on 07/05/2013 7:45:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Why? It actually lowers the costs for the STEM degrees. This puts the college at a competitive advantage to attract STEM talent.
That depends on the school. The English profs I had made salaries in the 30s and 40s range.
As someone who has set up many projects with scope, schedule and budget, as well as being responsible to meet them I tell you:
Anyone who consistently is under budget, is a damn poor estimator. And it isn't great for the client, who held back money on other projects because you said you needed more on yours. If you are consistently and noticeably above specifications, you are either spending money you didn't need, or you wrote poor specs in the first place.
The best way to be successful doing project engineering work is on time, scope and schedule. Crap does happen and there needs to be contingencies, but those should be identified separately from the base budget. If contingencies are not openly described, they will get duplicated by multiple parties in the project, trying to cover their behind.
I don’t know the acronym STEM.
And while for a few, cost is no object, it was for me and essentially everyone I went to college with, or worked with since. It would drive those high cost degrees to other locations, if most of the competition has not done the same.
I’d be giving American born Engineering majors a discount simply because we’ll need them if we ever decide to build anything again.
If they follow this rule of charging more for degrees that are worthwhile, they’ll have to charge nothing for Black Studies and Womyn’s Studies.
I’ve been in favor of this approach all along, in principal.
Tuition costs should reflect the equipment and facilities used in the course, at least theoretically. Now such costs are averaged and imposed on all students at the college, meaning that the English or math major in effect subsidizes the Bio-chem major, and they all subsidize the football team.
Consider the actual costs of a survey of English Literature: the professor’s salary and the maintenance of a room and a few desks. Student’s would provide the paper or the computer,and texts—and most of these are available on-line or in paperback.
It’s the same with the other liberal arts, mathematics and most introductory professional courses.
Indeed, credit for these courses should be awarded through a system of examinations, with the burden of learning course material carried by the student.
Ideally, a earning a degree should work like this:
Select the program at a central campus.
Pay registration fee, say $100 and receive a schedule of
lectures, URLs of canned lectures, a list of tutors, and a schedule of comprehensive final exams, a timetable, etc.
At the end of the course, or immediately for those who have taken the course elsewhere, the student pays to take the exam.
Students could take the exams as often as necessary, but must pay for each instance.
It would seem that this sort of approach would cost the student far less than the current one, regardless of subsidies from government and private entities.
This would assure a more or less universal standard for a core curriculum that any student could afford, after which the student could either move onto technical or professional training, or go to work.
The subsequent massive layoff of liberal arts professors should generate enough funds to improve and expand engineering departments across the country. :)
True, but my understanding is that the sports teams are a major profit centre.
Science/Technology/Engineering/Medicine.
STEM. :)
So did I. 30 yrs ago.
I agree.
One of my kids attends Marietta College, a small liberal arts school in OH. It has a highly regarded, difficult to get into Petroleum/Natural Gas Engineering Program (as well as recognized Geology Program). The classes are small sized; difficult as “major related” courses are the curriculum from day one of Freshman year. Alot of weeding done then. No one has ever heard of the school, save for industry insiders (east of the Mississippe—west is CO School of Mines).
Same idea—students need to know what they want to do and find the best programs out there (and alot of times that requires alot of research).
STEM...
I wasn’t disagreeing with your vote. I didn’t see how a University thought it would work for them if it passed.
Simple, you spread the cost out among a greater number of students.
Not when you include the revenue from the major sports.
At my college, the revenue from football alone paid for all other athletic programs, at least so we were told. But that wasn't hard to believe with a stadium seating for ~100k.
Actually, colleges shouldn’t charge ANYTHING at all for worthless degrees like English.
If tuition were truly based on market pricing, they’d pay people to be engineering majors and have to charge $200,000 per year for “African Studies.”
I suspect the whole article is based on false premises.
To begin with comparing an advanced engineering course (with few students) to a low-level psychology course (with many students) is a proverbial apples to oranges comparison. What is the ratio of costs between advanced engineering courses and advanced psychology or advanced English classes? Or between low-level lab science courses and intro psychology or freshman comp classes? And how much of the extra cost (assuming there is any) is paid for by lab fees or the engineering course or lab science being for more credit hours? Is the accounting really sound, or is it misattributing as a cost of running an undergraduate course in the sciences costs the university needs to incur to win research grants or run a graduate program in the engineering or scientific discipline?
More important, the analysis forgets that the cost of running a public university is typically paid by a combination of tuition, subsidies from the state’s budget, income on endowments, and extramural grant-funding (from the Feds, corporations and foundations) for research activities. (I believe, traditionally about 1/3 of the cost of running public universities comes from tuition, though this has doubtless risen recently with state budget cuts.) Charging the same tuition for expensive-to-offer courses in useful disciplines as is charged for cheap-to-offer courses in the humanities and social sciences translates into a state subsidy for the useful disciplines, and isn’t that good public policy?
I am missing something, or we are saying the same thing in different words.
I do not understand why university thinks it can raise prices on select degrees when their competition is not raising prices on the same degrees.
Spreading the cost out among the greatest number of students is what they are doing now. Correct? Same price per credit hour for everyone.
I don't understand how the university would change that and succeed if their competition did not do the same. Isn't that what you were voting against?
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.