I have the impression that schools are charging more for engineering and business because they can and not due to costs. Business profs may earn more, but the classes are popular and larger than many liberal arts majors with tiny classes. I think the larger classes more than offset the higher salary costs.
Cost can only be the “obvious” reason, there are other unknown factors in the calculation. I guess it may have some tie to market value too. For research departments, significant amount of the faculty salary is from external research grant. Class sizes do matter but we may need to factor in the total number of classes and majors offered within each school.
UVa mentions cost in explaining added fees for engineering.
http://www.seas.virginia.edu/admissions/undergraduate/engrfee.php
That Minnesota data is interesting. I would like to know more about how they allocated the indirect costs, but it certainly challenges the notion that engineering education is relatively high cost. It does make sense that the expense of maintaining relatively unpopular and uncommercial humanities departments drives up the per-student liberal arts costs.
ucbalumnus: I am not aware of anyone charging math majors more.
From Virginia Tech with info on what other colleges are charging in engineering fees for 2014-15.
Even within engineering, the costs range significantly. Computer Science is cheap with large full classes and no expensive lab equipment. Nuclear engineering is probably very expensive.
I think they can charge more for majors that are popular, but not by cost. If you do it by cost, you will end up with fewer and fewer majors over time as only the larger majors are cost effective.
It is also worth noting that UMN’s costs are quite low compared to the cost that some private universities claim that they spend per student (even after subtracting costs for financial aid, room, and board). For example, Duke spends $90,000 per student, according to http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-000-a-year-for-college-is-actually-a-discount . Subtracting the 24% which is financial aid, the spending is still $68,400. That probably includes room and board, but even subtracting $14,000 listed for that leaves $54,400 for non-room-and-board costs, or about four times what UMN spends.
What makes Duke’s spending so much higher?
University of Minnesota adds fees for programs , looks like higher fees for management and engineering.
http://onestop.umn.edu/finances/costs_and_tuition/fees/college_and_program_fees.html
@ucbalumnus Probably includes Coach K’s salary, the medical school, and every other cost they can think of. Probably just went to the financial statements and divided total expenses by number of undergrads.
That number doesn’t make any sense but it is designed to look impressive, not to make sense.
@ucbalumnus, @Much2learn, yep, if you work with accountants, you’ll discover that accountants can do amazing things, depending on just what objective they are trying to accomplish.
Also, if I remember right, UMN allocated a lot more spending to grad students than undergrads, but just how that allocation should be done with profs and labs that both undergrads and grads can access is up to question.
@ucbalumnus I suspect one factor is student : faculty ratio which is 18:1 at UMinn and 7:1 at Duke. Numbers from this source http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-minnesota-twin-cities/academic-life/faculty-composition/ http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/duke-university/academic-life/
You pay the more expensive of the two. Michigan has different tuition based on major. At Michigan business is like $1500 a semester more expensive than liberal arts, and engineering is about $2000 more expensive. The exception is CS in the liberal arts school, where you start paying the engineering rate when you declare engineering.
I’m pretty sure the reasoning is because the market will bare it. There’s no way it costs more to allow students to study CS (with much bigger classes and no equipment costs) than Philosophy (with much smaller classes) or Chemistry (with equipment costs).
At schools that charge by the semester and not by credit hour, engineering is less expensive because the typical engineering student takes more classes for the same price.
There are all sorts of levels of more and less expensive because different majors may have different requirements (depending on school) and different amounts of credits are given for different AP scores, so one major may be able to graduate a semester before another major.
Still, the differences aren’t that big compared to, say, Canada (where a BA in CS or BArts&Sciences in CS is significantly cheaper than a BS in CS from the College of Science at McGill, for instance).
At these schools that charge by majors, can you take all the required courses but one to save money? Or is it each course that you pay for?
@mathmom, at many of these schools, you’re registered as a certain major (eventually) if you wish to graduate with that major. Also, the most popular majors/schools may be impacted with restrictions on whether non-majors (or people outside that school) may take classes in that major/school.
However, if, say, there are vacancies and no restrictions for all Civil Engineering classes, you could conceivably take all the classes required for the major, but you wouldn’t be able to graduate as a Civil Engineering major unless you transfer over (and get accepted).
Realistically/logistically, because many state schools do not have much excess capacity in these majors where they charge more, they give dibs on classes to students in their major (and because the difference in tuition is a few thousand a year, rather than a few ten thousands, which is the case in the UK/Canada/Japan), you’re going to switch over by the start of junior year at the latest if you want to graduate with that major.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
Or, is that something different…?
Why, indeed, but this isn’t the way it works at all schools who have differentiated levels of tuition. When my D started her BFA in Drama at Tisch (NYU) back in 2003, Tisch’s tuition was higher than any other school at NYU, even Stern. I don’t know for sure that this is still the case but I wouldn’t be surprised.
So, yes, this is nothing new.
With both being far lower than a U.S. equivalent.
mathmom - I can’t speak for all the schools, but at NC State it would not work. They charge a “college of engineering” fee per semester to all students enrolled in engineering, and you have to be enrolled in engineering to take the classes. Not that big a deal in this case since the fee is only about $50.
For the earlier post that had date for VA tech, I had to laugh a little since they clearly cherry picked the schools on that list. NC State is almost in their backyard and was not mentioned. (I am a Tech alum, so I am not attacking the school, just enjoying a chuckle)
Maybe the engineering fee is going up at NC State? This says full time engineering fee is $250 per semester.
http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/cashier/tuition/ugtuition.asp