Differential tuition asks students to pay more in three career fields
Differential tuition is a “solution of last resort when all of the other arguments fail,” said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars & Admissions Officers.
This cost-per-credit expense is applied to certain classes above standard tuition for a university.
A raise in the business school’s differential tuition was approved in February, and students in this school will pay an additional $15 per credit hour beginning in fall of 2011 for upper division courses, which will reach a total of $97 per credit hour in 2014. Graduate students in the business school will see a $50 increase per credit hour to the current $199 they pay in differential tuition. It will increase another $50 each year for the next two years.
The additional student costs are needed for faculty and staff salaries, operating expenses, student services and programs and expenditures such as marketing, said Ken Snyder, dean of the business school.
More than a decade ago, USU implemented differential tuition in the undergraduate and graduate courses in the business school and the college of engineering, as well as graduate programs in the department of communicative disorders and deaf education.
Nassirian said charging differential tuition is much more common at the graduate level, but charging undergraduates differential tuition can be problematic. He said by charging more for certain classes, students may skip out on their dreams of becoming an engineer or businessman simply because it costs more. He said it is important that undergraduate classes be priced evenly so students can pursue their dreams without having to worry about monetary differences.
“For some people the added costs might not be manageable, so it makes students pick majors not on the basis of interest, but on what it might cost them,” Nassirian said.
Nassirian did credit those making the decision to implement differential tuition, saying tuition pricing is a very agonizing decision and it is not anyone’s first thought to “jack up tuition.”
Concerns about not being able to branch out and try different classes is something USU’s Executive Vice President Raymond Coward said doesn’t apply to “the vast majority of courses that charge differential tuition.”
He said very few lower-division courses charge even a $2 per-credit fee. Business senator Skyler Jenks said students who want to try business classes won’t usually be taking the 3000-level courses that have differential tuition attached.
Introducing differential tuition on undergraduate courses results in a change in student behavior, Nassian said.
“The point is you really want to give as broad as choice of major as possible and let their interests define where they end up,” he said.
Coward said since USU began charging differential tuition, there has been no decrease in enrollment and students see the increase in fees as a need to improve their quality of education.
“Many students understand that the differential tuition is an investment in the quality of their education and their future,” Coward said.
Jenks said he has seen the difference differential tuition has brought to the teaching staff at the business school. He said he has been here since 2006 and over that time the improvement of teachers has been drastic.
“Hands down I agree with differential tuition,” Jenks said. “I have seen an undeniable difference since implementing it.”
Jenks said once business students understand where the money will be spent, most are on board with the idea. A letter was sent to all business school students explaining how much money they were requesting as well as where the money will be spent.
The business school also offered three open forums for question and answering. When it came to make a decision, Jenks said the student-led business council unanimously voted for differential tuition.
However, business student Ben Williams said if Jenks thinks the majority of business students are okay with differential tuition, he isn’t talking to enough students, or the students he is talking to don’t know the whole situation.
“A lot of business students I don’t think have a vague idea. I bet if you asked 10 students where their differential tuition was going you would get blank stares about it. They know about it, but they don’t know where it is going,” Williams said.
Solving problems with money instead of finding different solutions will only create an ongoing problem that will take more money to solve, said Williams, a former presidential candidate for the Associated Students of USU (ASUSU).
“I understand the value of education, it could go up a couple thousand dollars and I would still be here, but it is the use of the funds that is what we need to be concentrating on,” he said.
The reasoning behind charging some colleges and departments with differential tuition versus others is the cost of running that program. Ken Snyder, executive dean and chief administrative officer for business, said it is a supply-and-demand formula that causes costs for salaries to increase. He said there is a high demand for business school professors that “drives the price up.”
Another problem with increasing salaries is the fact that money being provided by the legislature is going down, Snyder said.
“In an ideal world maybe it would be better to have state citizens and legislature recognize the importance of education,” Snyder said.
Williams said he agrees that to retain faculty money will have to be spent, but he said the business school doesn’t need high profile names to be a good school. He said professors with real world experience and who have a passion for academia rather than awards and accolades is what the college should be looking for.
In 2008, Glen Nelson, vice president of business and finance for the Arizona Board of Reagents, did a study on differential tuition in undergraduate majors at public research universities like USU.
Nelson cited environmental factors like declining state support and increasing institutional costs to explain why differential tuition is becoming so common. It stated the “primary reasons for institutions not adopting differential tuition were concern for student access and legislative prohibitions.”
“There are universities who don’t have differential tuition because they do feel like it would limit student’s choices, we see that in the data,” Nelson said.
The business school is not the only department that has differential tuition. The graduate program in communicative disorders and deaf education has implemented those costs and department head Kim Corbin-Lewis said that extra money allows for smaller class sizes and one-on-one interactions for graduate students. She said programs like speech language pathology have requirements that dictate supervision that occurs for those students.
“When it comes to learning how to work with someone with a voice or hearing disorder it is much more effective for students to have one-on-one time. These programs are much more intensive,” Corbin-Lewis said.
She said she thinks students have accepted the extra costs because they understand where it is going. She said they benefit from smaller class sizes, usually 15, and that individualized attention.
Williams said raising tuition fo
r certain colleges “alienates other colleges that are inside of the university” and gives those colleges unspoken precedence.
“It’s like we are holding the business school to a higher standard because they need more money, well why do they need more money than other departments? What makes them any more special? I don’t see that they are doing things differently, the services being provided by the business school are being provided in other colleges but we have to pay more,” he said.
Coward said since the cost of delivering courses is different among areas of emphasis, differential tuition is “to target some portion of those additional costs to those students who are enrolled in the higher-cost programs.”
He said instead of having the entire student body cover those extra costs by raising tuition, differential tuition is charged to those students who see the most benefit.
However, Nassirian said universities don’t price things by what they cost. He said if that was the case, than freshman English classes would cost a lot less than a third-year dynamics course.
“Some majors need nothing more than a blackboard and chairs and there are other majors that involve other costs. It is a solution for last resort, but that doesn’t make it any less problematic,” Nassirian said.
Nelson said raising general tuition does make sense. He found in researching for his study that the average differential tuition is about 11 percent of resident undergraduate tuition, while the average amount differential tuition brings in to the university as a whole is only 2-3 percent. He said because of this, it makes more sense to raise tuition 2-3 percent to entire student body.
“That way, you wouldn’t have to have more expensive classes limit student choice,” Nelson said.
– megan.b@aggiemail.usu.edu