hard to see why maths students should be charged more on the basis of either cost of the course, or earning potential. Also higher cost of entry should keep the riff raff out, thereby increasing the scarcity value of an engineering degree.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
Are you saying that just because someone can't afford to enter into a higher cost engineering education they are not qualified to be an engineer? I'm not sure I agree with that statement, but you are entitled to your opinion. I would think a better way to keep the riff raff out would be to increase the demand of the curriculum. That way only the best make it through an the others become business majors.
When I started at University, I was in a basic engineering 101 class with 45 Civil Engineering students, when I graduated 4 years later I was with 10 Civil Engineering Students...... and not one other peer was with me from the engineering 101 class. Using the statistics provide to me by NCEES only 70% passed the FE the first time and only 33% passes the Structural I exam the first time when I took it. Using that information out of 45 students....only 3-4 wold be practicing structural engineers at this point (figuring some repeat takers passing the exams). So from beginning to end, 90% of the class either didn't graduate as an engineer or failed at the PE exam. I think that is a pretty good weeding of the riff raff.
Of course, this is coming from someone who probably shouldn't have made it through.... and never would have made it through 40-50 years ago when a calculator was only for the privileged.
Another aspect of the question is who is paying or perhaps partially subsidizing the cost for the student.
If the government (be it state federal or whatever) is subsidizing the education in some way (be it student grants, low cost student loans, money to the university system directly...) then is it unreasonable for them to see where their best return on investment may be.
In this case it might be argued that courses which will give greater payback to the govt due to higher taxes on higher earnings (as well as any multiplier effects), as well as those which have some other clear beneficial effect on society/the economy should in fact benefit more from any govt subsidy (in whatever form) while those courses with less pay back to society should actually receive less subsidy in whatever form.
I believe there was talk in Texas of something along these lines.
This may mean some arts majors etc. pay full ticket price for their education with less subsidy of any loans etc. I find it hard to believe the academic elite would allow this to happen, if nothing else the issue of education for education sake V 'trade school' will probably be brought up and vociferously argued.
Plus, government may not do a good job at predicting what majors will be in demand in the future and so could misdirect any rationing/subsidies messing things up further.
KENAT,
I was talking about this to a recent graduate in Australia and she said that her student loans are paid by her income tax. The way she describe it is that:
[ul]
[li]Once she got a job, she calculates her income tax on wages earned in Australia[/li]
[li]The income tax she calculated is applied directly to her outstanding student loan[/li]
[li]If she immigrates then the debt reverts to a traditional loan[/li]
[li]When the loan is paid off, her taxes go where everyone else's taxes go[/li]
[/ul]
This seems like a really good way to apply economic policy to further a country's goals. It would probably work for a state, but you have to worry about some of the interstate commerce issues (and Texas doesn't have an income tax).
"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"
Charging more for certain majors sounds like an awful idea, especially engineering. I had a long rant, but decided to stay away from that. With that being said I still remember how much more text books were each quarter compared to other majors!! Spending $400 on books for 1 steel structural class.
B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer
Mike: But according to everyone I know its easy to get a job with an engineering degree. Obviously none of them are engineers. But that mindset is out there. Just like how nursing is starting to become harder to find a job now. But schools are churning them out like the dollar printing press.
B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer
Well, at least one post agrees with my logic, if you reduce the number of engineering graduates then it should be easier for them to find jobs. Incidentally the UK currently charges more for some degrees than others, as does Australia. I can see no reason why all degrees should cost the same.
If as a matter of policy you decide to subsidise some courses, that is fine, but it should start from a sensible discussion about costs and priorities.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
Let us think of the law of supply and demand. Salaries (generally speaking) are based upon this principle. When fresh out of school, I took a job at an A & E firm. After a few weeks, a couple of newbies (various disciplines) were at lunch and salaries became the discussion. I felt my compensation was decent. An architect, at the table discovered he was making less than half what I was as a structural engineer. I discovered I was making 20% less than the electrical engineer.
The architect, very upset by the discussion, went to HR to complain about his salary. He was told that the market had been flooded and he could be replaced easily.
So, if we base tuition on future earning potential, do we run the risk of pushing more people into the lower cost education (with lower future earning potential)? If so, then do we not further decrease the earning potential of these people? Just like it may have a positive impact on engineering salaries.
As I said, decide what your desired outcome is and then modify your strategy to suit. You seem to be saying that fewer engineering graduates is a bad thing, yet many people would agree that it can be quite hard to find openings for (say 90%) of fresh engineering graduates in appropriate jobs. One approach might be to increase the fees for engineering degrees, and so reduce the supply, or you could subsidise the wages of first year graduates, for example. The unintended consequences of the latter could be quite atrocious. I'd rather see a barrier to entry raised on ability rather than ability to pay, but I've know absolutely useful engineers who are academically mediocre, and of course clever but lousy engineers.
So far as the USA goes
1)engineering degrees cost more to run than basket-weaving degrees
2)US industry claims there are not enough engineering graduates (we know what that really means)
3)Engineering graduates claim they cannot get well paid attractive engineering jobs with good prospects.
4)Engineers tend to earn more than basket-weavers.
Obviously points 2 and 3 can't both be true in the same way. Obviously employers would say that they just can't qualified engineers to work for minimum wage, and some graduates would say that they should be on a red carpet ride to a corner office with a minibar.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
"I'd rather see a barrier to entry raised on ability rather than ability to pay, but I've know absolutely useful engineers who are academically mediocre, and of course clever but lousy engineers."
There in is part of the tricky bit. Being good at maths & science at school are necessary but in my opinion often insufficient prerequisites for being a good engineer and enjoying (at least relatively) being an engineer.
I'm far from convinced there's a lack of engineering graduates in terms of sheer numbers in the US. There may be a lack of engineers with the right skills willing to work for the 'right pay' as Greg suggests. There may also be a lack of willingness on behalf of some employers to take grads and continue their eduction (or potentially have more effective internship/sandwich year courses etc.).
There might even be too many people taking engineering that while good at maths and physics don't have much interest in engineering as such and so don't thrive in industry.
There may also be students that determine that engineering seems harder than certain other courses and think they can get better grades for the same or lesser effort in another course of study.
In our recent recruiting they have wanted folks with certain precision instrumentation/machinery skills which in practice has meant recent phd candidates from one of the few schools that have a directly relevant graduate research dept. Of these recent phd candidates nearly all of them have been non US residents. Now whether this is because all the US resident phd grads have better opportunities elsewhere or because there are a lot more non US resident Phd candidates in these fields I don't know for sure.
Simplistically though it might suggest that the effective cost for US grads to get these Phd's is already too high?
soo... would you charge people based on their declared major, or based on their courseload? Seems that an easy work-around would be to come into the school as a geology major, take all your engineering courses, then switch to engineering a year or so before graduation?
The way to deal with graduating too many engineers is to graduate fewer of them. Make the admission criteria harder, and the coursework harder too. Oh, and stop selling an engineering education to kids as if it was soap. It's important to distinguish the value that engineering provides to society (which is substantial) from the benefit of engineering as a career option. The latter is still great if you're in the top 10% of a great university, but on average it has slipped to be the poorest cousin of the real professions simply because we crank out too much supply via graduation and immigration.
Tuition needs to be high enough to deter kids who are just wasting their time partying with no intention of graduating, but low enough and/or paired with grants to ensure that it's not a barrier to kids without supportive parents or whose parents aren't rich. Public education is a fundamental societal and economic value- it's essential to counteract the tendency to generate a static aristocracy and a static under-class. We've seen too much of that already in the last 20 years.
Shortage? The only shortage is of employers willing to hire fresh grads and train them. The business lobby want a cheap, cowed workforce that was entirely trained at someone else's expense. They never want to see wages rise in response to skills demand. And in engineering, they haven't.
My first thought was why shouldn't tuition be related to the cost to provide the education. Seems like simple economics. More facilities are needed to teach computer science, or engineering than English or art or philosophy. Universities should be competing with industry for qualified professors in courses that actually have industry, so salaries should be higher.
Charging more for tuition based merely on your chosen major seems like a bad idea.
If there really is a shortage of engineers, they should be charging less so more people could afford it. Besides, any engineering major has plenty of weed-out classes to keep those who can't handle it out of the profession.
