A Stitch in Haste

"The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
--Oscar Wilde

Everyone knows that most traditionally structured colleges and universities engage in price discrimination — charging different students different amounts for the same education. The basis, typically, is simple Marxism: "From each according to his ability."

On the other hand, since college is strictly voluntary, and since colleges compete against each other on fronts other than net cost, the redistributionist nature of college finance is much less pernicious and obscene than, say, the death tax.

Nevertheless, how interesting it is that a new form of collegiate price discrimination — charging different students different amounts for different educations — seems so astonishing as to require a New York Times exposé:

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.

Such moves are being driven by the high salaries commanded by professors in certain fields, the expense of specialized equipment and the difficulties of getting state legislatures to approve general tuition increases, university officials say.
...
Even as they embrace such pricing, many officials acknowledge they are queasy about a practice that appears to value one discipline over another or that could result in lower-income students clustering in less expensive fields.

A market-mimicking system where price differentials reflect cost differentials and where supply and demand play at least some role in dictating outcomes?

How utterly ghastly that must seem to the median college administrator.

Meanwhile, here's my question: Apologists for raced-based admission standards in higher education (not to mention the Supreme Court's recent race-based cases) rely on the proposition that an institution of higher learning is not so much about providing an education, but rather about providing an "environment" — and that such an "environment" requires "diversity" to be effective. So, for instance, the purpose of a law school ceases to be "training lawyers" but rather "creating an atmosphere" (as if the law can be inhaled like nasal spray).

But clearly, if the university is not about earning a degree but "absorbing an environment," then there can be no basis for price discrimination by major. Yes, the engineering major may have used up more (expensive) lab resources than the French major, but they were (supposedly) equally exposed to the "diversity" of the campus. Yes the economics major may attend a senior seminar by the (expensive) Nobel Prize winning faculty member while the sociology major gets to listen to an otherwise unemployable adjunct. But they (supposedly) equally partook of the "culture" of the campus. And they should all therefore have the same (nominal) tuition, no?

So which is it: "Education" or "learning"? "Diploma" or "diversity"? "Major" or "memories"?

For each choice, a college can (supposedly) be both. But its tuition bill (and its admission staff's algorithms) cannot.

More thoughts at Conglomerate.