Why don't wealthy students protest tuition hikes?

ucbalumnus
Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:09:22 +0000

nick_scheu:

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.



https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/MCB.stm

A decent percentage, but far from the majority, go on to medical or other professional school. However, the majority who do not face poor job and career prospects. Also, those who go for a PhD do not face a particularly good job market either; see [Education: The PhD factory : Nature News](Education: The PhD factory | Nature) .



nick_scheu:

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.



History, political science, and psychology graduates find higher average pay than MCB (or IB) graduates. So do American studies, Asian studies, cognitive science, ethnic studies, interdisciplinary studies, legal studies, linguistics, media studies, and political economy graduates.

https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm

Of course, job markets can change, so any policy attempting to chase job market demands with tuition subsidies for specific majors would require yearly maintenance. Remember that civil engineering and architecture went from boom (2005) to bust (2009) in just four years – if the state policy were to increase subsidies to induce students to study civil engineering and architecture in 2005, that would have just increased the number of unemployed civil engineers and architects when they graduated in 2009.