And Arizona State University
this fall will phase in for upperclassmen in the journalism school a $250 per
semester charge above the basic $2,411 tuition for in-state students.
Such moves are being driven by the high salaries commanded by professors in
certain fields, the expense of specialized equipment and the difficulties of
getting state legislatures to approve general tuition increases, university
officials say.
“It is something of a trend,” said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive
director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions
Officers.
Even as they embrace such pricing, many officials acknowledge they are
queasy about a practice that appears to value one discipline over another or
that could result in lower-income students clustering in less expensive fields.
“This is not the preferred way to do this,” said Patrick V. Farrell, provost
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “If we were able to raise resources
uniformly across the campus, that would be a preferred move. But with our
current situation, it doesn’t seem to us that that’s possible.”
At the University of Kansas,
which started charging different prices in the early 1990s, there are signs
that the higher cost of majoring in certain subjects is affecting the choices
of poorer students.
“We are seeing at this point purely anecdotal evidence,” said Richard W.
Lariviere, provost and executive vice chancellor at the university. “The price sensitivity
of poor students is causing them to forgo majoring, for example, in business or
engineering, and rather sticking with something like history.”
Private universities do not face the same tuition constraints and for the
most part are avoiding the practice, educators say, holding to the traditional
idea that college students should be encouraged to get a well-rounded
education.
Richard Fass, vice president for planning at Pomona, a private liberal arts
college in California, said educators there considered it fundamental for
students to feel part of the larger college, not segmented by differential
costs. “The entire curriculum is by design available to all students,” he said.
Some public university officials say they worry that students who are charged
more for their major will stick to the courses in their field to feel that they
are getting their money’s worth.
“I want students in the College of Engineering at Iowa State to take courses
in the humanities and to take courses in the social sciences,” said Mark J.
Kushner, the dean of that college. To address problems like climate change, Mr.
Kushner said, graduates will need to understand much more than technology.
“That’s sociology, that’s economics, that’s politics, that’s public policy.”
Undergraduate juniors and seniors in the engineering school at Iowa State
last year began paying about $500 more annually, he said, and the size of that
additional payment is scheduled to rise by $500 a year for at least the next
two years.
Mr. Kushner said he thought society was no longer looking at higher
education as a common good but rather as a way for individuals to increase
their earning power.
“There was a time, not that long ago, 10 to 15 years ago, that the vast
majority of the cost of education at public universities was borne by the
state, and that was why tuition was so low,” he said. “That was based on the
premise that the education of an individual is a public good, that individuals
go out and become schoolteachers and businessmen and doctors and lawyers, that
makes society better. That’s no longer the perception.”
Neither the State University of
New York nor the Connecticut State University System use differential
pricing, officials say. New Jersey, however, has done so for years, according
to Greg Trevor, senior director of media relations for Rutgers. In the new
school year, in-state undergraduates in the general program will pay tuition of
$8,541, but engineering and pharmacy students will pay $9,484.80 and business
students will pay $8,716.
Various universities have adopted different versions of differential pricing
to try to fight the unintended consequences it may create. Colleges that charge
higher tuition for a major like business, engineering or journalism generally
allow students outside the field to take some courses in the subject without
paying more.
“We do try to encourage crossing disciplines, to get a feel for the world,”
said Randy Kangas, assistant vice president for planning and budgeting at the University of Illinois,
where students studying business, chemistry and the life sciences pay higher
tuition.
Most universities with differential tuition use some of the money — 20 to 25
percent — for additional financial aid to offset some of the impact.
Officials at universities that have recently implemented higher tuition for
specific majors say students have supported the move.
Students in the business school at the University of Wisconsin, for example,
got behind the program because they believed that it would support things like
a top-notch faculty. “It’s very important to all the students in the business
school to sustain our reputation,” said Jesse C. Siegelman, 21, who expects to
graduate in December 2008.
Mr. Siegelman said representatives of 26 of 28 student groups that belong to
the school’s Undergraduate Student Leadership Council, of which he was
president last year, voted to support the tuition proposal.
In engineering programs, the additional money often goes toward costly
laboratory equipment, because students and the companies that will employ them
expect graduates to be able to go to work immediately using state of the art
tools, said Mr. Lariviere of the University of Kansas.
“In many instances,” he said, “industry itself is demanding this.”
And in business schools, professors’ salaries have risen, with some schools
paying starting professors $130,000 or more, said G. Dan Parker III, associate
executive vice president of Texas A&M, which
he said was considering whether to charge higher tuition to undergraduate
students studying business.
“The salaries we pay for entering assistant professors on average is
probably larger than the average salary for full professors at the university,”
Mr. Parker said of business professors. “That’s how far the pendulum has swung
at the business schools, and I sure wish they’d fix it.”
While several university officials said students in majors that carried
higher costs could bear the burden because they would be better paid after
graduation, Mr. Lariviere said he was skeptical of that rationale. He pointed
out that many people change jobs several times over a career and that a major
is a poor predictor of lifetime income.
“Where we have gone astray culturally,” he said, “is that we have focused
almost exclusively on starting salary as an indicator of life earnings and also
of the value of the particular major.”