The Pissed Off Professor

Read Part 1 | Read Part 2

#3: Raise Tuition Fees

Let’s be honest: most adults who see a penny on the ground don’t bother picking it up; however, those same adults will certainly stop for a dollar that’s been dropped.

Take a moment to consider the bottom-line coin value it would take to get you to bend over and pick it up. I’ll give you, say 10 seconds to think about it.

10

9

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1

On my salary, I’d be game at a nickel or better, but let’s just go with a quarter. It’s not good enough to buy a stamp anymore, but it is one-fourth of a dollar, and with a dollar, you can still do a few things.

Now, let’s talk tuition:

Annual Tuition Costs for Full-time Undergraduate Students Who Are California Residents:

• University of California: $6,141
• California State University: $2,520:
• Community College: $600

Attending a UC is about 10 times the cost of attending a community college. Attending a CSU is about 4 times the cost of attending a community college.

Now, the value we place on the quarter is relative: if we only had quarters, one-dollar bills, and 2.5-dollar bills in our society, the quarter would be the penny of the bunch.

The community college is the penny, so it’s no wonder so many people sign up for classes and just drop them.

Still not convinced? Well, let me point one more thing out: at the UC and the CSU levels, tuition fees are priced in bulk. That means any student wishing to take between 1 and 6 units pays one lump sum (over one thousand dollars), and a student wishing to take more than 6 units pays a higher lump sum. (Students who want to exceed a certain unit level must also get special permission, so it’s not like a trip to Costco folks.)

Community colleges charge by the unit, so if I sign up for a class valued at 3 units, I pay the per-unit fee times three. If I sign up for two classes valued at a total of 7 units, I pay the per-unit fee times seven. If I sign up for a class valued at 1 unit, I pay the per-unit fee times one.

Let’s look at a student who takes two classes during a semester (i.e. 6 units):

• University of California: $3,070
• California State University: $1,260
• Community College: $ 240

The financial commitment to attend a community college makes courses throw-away items: if a student signs up and doesn’t want to remain (for whatever reason), she just drops the class.

She’s out the tuition-fee equivalent of a penny, so she really doesn’t care.

Having taught at each of the levels, I can tell you the drop rates at the CSU and the UC are much lower than they are at the community college level. While there are certainly a variety of other issues that factor in, the primary difference is based on the financial commitment made by the student.

It’s just too hard to blow-off thousands of dollars, and it’s just too easy to blow off a couple hundred.

If we price a semester’s worth of education below the cost of the average cell phone, we can’t possibly expect the item to be taken care of or treated with respect.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 11:07 am and is filed under College, Education, English, Students, Teaching, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.