Why don't wealthy students protest tuition hikes?

nick_scheu
Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:04:35 +0000

I meant Redlands in my last post. Darned iPhone keyboard.

@ucbalumnus
I tend to write in broad strokes. If there are majors in the sciences that are not in demand, there should not be policies pushing students toward them. That said, on the Cell and Molecular Biology issue, I don’t think you can just look at the employability of those with only undergraduate degrees. If 80% of undergraduates from CMB go to grad school, and if those with a masters or PhD in CMB are in great demand, then I think it makes sense to subsidize the major at an undergraduate level. I don’t know that this is the case–my point is to look beyond how many jobs are available for those with only a bachelor’s if a high number of graduates go to grad school.

As for engineering majors being capacity-limited… Perhaps additional funding would allow for increased capacity.

Continuing with my broad strokes comment, of course we should encourage students to pursue non-science but still in-demand majors like economics and applied mathematics. What I’m trying to move away from is the thousands of graduates in fields like English, history, sociology, psychology, political science, gender studies, art, etc., whose job prospects are minimal. They should be free to pursue those majors, but just not with quite as great a subsidy as they currently receive.

@webhappy
I’m not advocating raising tuition $10k on the poor. I’m advocating raising it $10k on the top 15% of UC undergraduates, who make over $180k per year and come from the top 5% of the general population. For these students, Berkeley at $20k is still cheaper than Stanford at $35k.