I ran across this story last night on The Consumerist about colleges charging different tuition rates based on your major. I was particularly surprised to see the University of Wisconsin as the college being referenced:
Some state colleges and universities have started charging different undergraduate tuition rates depending on what the student decides to major in. Business majors at the University of Wisconsin pay $500 more each semester than do their liberal arts peers. Graduate schools have been doing this for years: Law school and med school tuition tends to be more per term than, say, an advanced degree in comparative literature. But is it fair?
Starting this fall, juniors and seniors pursuing an undergraduate major in the business school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will pay $500 more each semester than classmates. The University of Nebraska last year began charging engineering students a $40 premium for each hour of class credit.
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.
Post author Mark Ashley goes on to remark about the disparaging discrepancy:
Journalism??! Since when does journalism earn the big bucks? When's the last time someone you know said, "Yeah, I'm making good money, but it's not newspaper money..." ? (Anyway...) On the one hand, most of these majors lead to more lucrative careers, so students are getting greater value from their education than some of their peers. But colleges acknowledge that lower-income kids may be getting shut out of the bigger-money career tracks because of "price sensitivity" to the higher tuition rates.
So: Fair or not?
I think Ashley has a good point. I certainly didn't expend to walk into a career full of cash options and stock bonuses by getting a master's degree in English, but I at least expected to land a good career and a decent paycheck. Especially considering I was wagering 25 years of loan payments in order to put myself in the position to have a good career. Now, depending on your definition of "good career" and "decent paycheck," you may think I got the raw end of the deal, but if I had graduated with a MBA, would I have automatically stepped into a 65 grand per year position? If so, I probably would have been willing to pay a little more in college to do so. Yet, if colleges are charging more for "premium" programs and as a result are blocking lower-income students from choosing more lucrative career paths, there is something wrong there. The dilemma is that the problem is obvious, but a solution is not.
Check out the article at The Consumerist, a great website for anyone concerned about fighting back against shoddy customer service, false advertising, or those otherwise out to profit off you by misleading you about their products.