Higher Tuition for Some Majors

Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen Aug 2, 2007

Here's a somewhat startling new trend in higher education: charging more for certain majors than others. This coming semester, the University of Wisconsin will be charging an additional $500 extra per semester for students working towards a business major. A few other schools are considering similar actions.

Why? Well, from an economic perspective, this makes perfect sense. Courses in engineering, business, and the hard sciences are more expensive to teach than courses in the humanities and social sciences. For one thing, professor salaries in those fields are substantially higher. And in the case of engineering and science, expensive equipment and computer software are required to teach students. Part of the argument is that these students will be making more money than most humanities and liberal arts students when they graduate, so why shouldn't their degree cost more?

Much as this makes economic sense, I can see some serious problems looming. This kind of pricing system will almost certainly increase educational discrepancies between the rich and poor, especially if the price difference between majors is large. A higher proportion of poorer students will major in the more inexpensive subjects, which will lead to lower paying jobs and an increased wage gap.

In addition, do we really want to put a price on knowledge in such a literal way? Of course engineering careers pay better than philosophy careers-- but does that mean that engineering knowledge is more valuable? The pricing system will exacerbate the problem that many students see education as something you purchase to gain the ability to earn a paycheck-- and nothing else. There's already such a strong spirit of anti-intellectualism on college campuses, and this will make it worse.

Here's a real solution to the fact that schools are scrounging for money to fund their more expensive majors-- better funding! State colleges and universities were created to educate the public, and it's time we made education a priority and funded it properly.