At many schools (usually more selective ones), studying English literature is popular enough that an English department need not be “unprofitable” compared to other departments, since an English department need not be very costly to run (in terms of lab costs and/or faculty pay), and it also usually has a supplemental stream of work teaching frosh composition courses.
However, at some schools, the study of English literature is not very popular, so English departments mainly focus on frosh (or remedial) composition courses, which has sometimes led to faculty discontent in the news.
Majors that are less popular should be charged more.
It makes no sense that a computer science student who may be in many classes with 50-100 people get charged the same as a Egyptian History student who is in many classes with 5-10 students.
It is fair to charge extra for lab fees and things like that. Heck, even my son’s college charges an extra $20 for a PE course. But there should be deep discounts for things like engineering and business majors since those costs are being amortized over tons of students.
@skyoverme, no, it’s not backwards if a school is actually looking to maximize revenues. Why should a school charge less for more popular majors and more for unpopular majors? Clearly there is more demand for the more popular majors despite the large class sizes. And if a school wants to to cut down on the large class sizes some, they would be charging more for the most popular majors, no? If they charged less for those majors, there would be even more demand, even bigger class sizes, even more headaches, etc., and the school would also bring in less money. Why would they want that?
I didn’t know that was the charter of schools - to maximize revenue. If that were the case, they shouldn’t accept anyone who needs scholarship money and in fact should have an auction to see who gets in.
The issue is the fairness of allocating costs. If you don’t believe in fairness, that’s fine, then we can just disagree with what the purpose of a college is: maximizing revenue vs. fairly allocate costs against use.
@skyoverme, any institution that wants to survive needs to make sure that there is enough money to cover costs. That’s the real world. And in a world where state legislatures have been cutting back funding, state schools have been forced to look in to ways to increase revenue. I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that charging more for more popular majors is one way to do so.
As for fairness, it all depends on what you consider fair. To some people, it’s only fair that business & engineering (who also have higher costs) get charged more. You realize that a business prof gets paid far more than an English prof, don’t you? Also that b-schools tend to demand more services and engineering requires more labs. So if you’re going to amortize, business classes may have to be twice or 3 times as big as English classes for the cost per student to balance.
What services do you think that a business course “tend to demand” that an English course doesn’t that would require 2-3 as big classes to cover?
It doesn’t even take a simpleton to know that although a business prof may make more than an English prof, on a per student taught basis, they make a lot less.
It also doesn’t even take a simpleton to know that continuing to subsidize underused resources and programs is a big reason why State budgets are in such a disaster.
“Some students in some majors may have an inferior complex, just like students who go to a perceived “less prestigious” school may do. This could affect the quality of the campus life in a negative way.”
That’s true, but I don’t find that the tuition differential is much of a factor in these divisions. You can see this kind of pattern when everyone within the more elite unit says they go to “Kelley” or “Wharton” instead of using the name of the university. I guess a big tuition difference might make it even worse – it’s just already there in spades.
I have no idea why anyone would think that is fair. I am fine with charging for lab costs. But if you do that, then you also need to charge less for any money that the department is bringing in. For instance, I think Stanford made about $500M dollars off of Google and the bio department is still pulling in licensing and royalty money from some DNA sequencing patents. I would expect that the English department is pulling in a lot less.
Be honest, Business and Engineering are already carrying more than their weight, and now people think it is fair that the students should carry even more of the weight? LOL. Are we in upside down world again?
Average Professor Salaries:
Sociology: $155k
Computer Science: $145k
Public Affairs: $136k
So sociology majors should get charged a lot more, especially if those classes are smaller than Comp Sci?
(total department sizes are about the same, with Sociology slightly larger).
“I have no idea why anyone would think that is fair.”
There’s no way that this is really, at base, about the cost of operating the department. It’s about the popularity of a major and the perceived value of the degree.
@skyoverme, b-school students tend to get far better career services support than English majors.
In any case, if you think that Comp Lit majors are being subsidized and that the lower faculty-student ratio in Comp Lit classes is so wonderful, then you can just encourage your kid to major in Comp Lit. Problem solved, no?
Wait a minute. When are we judging things based on the perceived economic value of a degree? I thought that there is real value in having liberal arts majors and many of them write nice poems or go on to other fields and have an impact.
We have to decide if college is really just all about being a trade school and “maximizing revenue” or if it is about giving people an education.
If it is just a trade school and “maximizing revenue” then lets have an auction for the spots, charge based on the major and take a cut of their first several years of employment. We should then cut scholarships for those less valuable majors since we determined they are less valuable.
skyoverme–did you ever get to that demand-supply thing in college? Any rational economic unit is going to charge more for goods in highest demand. That even applies to colleges to some degree (and growing)
Thank you for being sorry.
But in the world that I live in, the goal of universities is NOT “maximizing revenue”.
You should actually be sorry for believing that is their goal.
@barrons Did you ever get to PED or the variable/fixed cost thing in college ? Also, in those models, the goal is not maximizing revenue but rather maximizing return.
Do you think a Ferrari is expensive becauee there is high demand for them or because it costs a lot to design/produce/market? Do you think it costs $800 to service a Rolex because demand for service is high or because the labor and time involved?
It is so cute that some people think that the goal of the college is to maximize revenue. I don’t see how that squares with providing scholarships, having really small classes in less popular degrees, and why they aren’t auctioning off admission to the highest bidders.