For major public universities its good for both to have a business college, especially since that becomes a 'fallback major' for a lot of students. There'd be a lot of transferring between schools that would be forced if you eliminated all duplication, especially of major colleges like business, which isnt very good for students. Not to mention i doubt either school has the means to meet the demand for both schools combined business colleges.
5% Tuition Jump Just a Start
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For major public universities its good for both to have a business college, especially since that becomes a 'fallback major' for a lot of students. There'd be a lot of transferring between schools that would be forced if you eliminated all duplication, especially of major colleges like business, which isnt very good for students. Not to mention i doubt either school has the means to meet the demand for both schools combined business colleges.
You hit the nail squarely on the head.
Just wondering if their logic would be the same if, for example, engineering students didn't make more, on average, than the typical four/five year student when they graduated. For some reason I believe deep down the universities think these students should share more of the burden. I feel like its almost punishment and may make prospective students think otherwise about these majors...
I've thought alot about duplication in our state university system. After all, they are administered by one entity, The State of Iowa. I think it’s redundant that both ISU and Iowa offer engineering programs. It would be completely different if the two schools were private. Is it a fair assumption that the main reason you choose Iowa over ISU for engineering is a student’s allegiance to black&gold? There really is no logic behind that decision. Its a completely emotional decision. Maybe there is a biomedical engineering appeal, but that could be absorbed into the medical program as graduate study.
This goes both ways. ISU could sacrifice certain programs to UNI and Iowa and vise versa. This already exists for vetmed, medicine and law.
Engineering and business have differential tuition to make class sizes smaller because people ******* classes were too big and it was a tougher learning environment. Instead of telling those students to start at DMACC and transfer in, Iowa State just decided to drill the students with a ton higher tuition (which students had no say in) to hire more instructors to cut down on huge lectures.
Actually, there were two open forums for student comment, as I recall. I attended the first one, in which there were about 20 people, approximately four were current students. We (the students) voiced our concern and Dean Kushner basically said that it was going to happen anyway, so deal with it. The line they kept repeating was that it would only equate to approximately two weeks of our first job's salary, so its not a big deal but a "fair" fee. However, when I voiced the opinion that College of Engineering faculty sacrifice two weeks of their salary each year as a show of solidarity and "fairness", there were no volunteers. I also suggested that they start charging the kids who got better grades more money, since they would be earning more than their counterparts after graduation and that would be a logical next step of "fairness".
Also, the differential tuition was not to cut down on huge lectures, it was presented as necessary because it costs more to educate engineers.
That was awfully nice of Dean Kushner to bail on the College of Engineering just a few short years after coming in new to ISU as Dean.
Sorry, I forgot to mention I was talking on the CoB side since I know that one up close and personal. It should start with engineering and business have differential tuition and then go into my minor rant. :smile:
I don't recall the CoB mentioning more than maybe an e-mail saying, "Oh by the way, our feedback says students don't like huge lectures so we're doing this to get rid of them." I have a feeling I could get a **** load of students to provide feedback that they'd love a full bar in Gerdin, but I don't see them acting on making that happen anytime in the near future.
I see - sorry for the misunderstanding. My knowledge of the subject is limited to the CoE, since I graduated after only enduring one sodomizing semester of differential tuition.
Can't discharge most student loans through bankruptcy. I think we're just going to see a generation of people paying off student loans that they never should have taken in the first place, and it being a huge economic burden on them for decades or more.
I've heard from more than one ISU engineering prof wondering why the Iowa taxpayer pays to fund competing, high-powered engineering programs at Iowa; I imagine the same questions are asked in Iowa City about our business college or some humanities departments.
But that's all they are: whispers or guarded conversations. No one wants to bring it up in the open.
I would agree about engineering, a specialized field. I would not agree about business where there is more than enough demand for both to have it.
People that rack up $50,000 in student loan debt to get a degree where they can only expect $35,000/year in salary will never make sense to me. Sure, a degree from Iowa State sounds cool and all, but if you could've gotten the same degree from a community college at a fraction of the cost, you screwed up (accounting would actually be a decent example...everyone who doesn't have LPA/CPA/etc. designation is just another person with an accounting degree. A Masters degree doesn't separate you from anything because you just look like someone who couldn't hack it on the CPA exam).
I know I have a friend at Iowa State and he just wants to be a police officer. He's taking on loans to pay for his apartment as well as tuition for his criminal justice degree that he could've gotten for a fraction of the cost by going to Iowa Central or NIACC.
There have been discussions within the Iowa Engineering Society, as an organization, to decided whether or not to take a public stance on the issue...To relocate all state sponsored engineering studies to one school.
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Holy **** would that **** people off. Either people in Iowa City would bomb the IES for taking away their engineering department, or people in Ames would if Iowa City got the nod.
Well, ISU has all the same Engineering programs as UofI the same cannot be said in reverse (AeroE for example). Sounds like ISU should become the only university offering engineering degrees.
:yes:
It isn't so crazy if you consider the source of this recommendation: a bunch of engineers who have been trained to, in most instances, ignore emotion and base decisions purely on hard data and logic.
That's exactly why engineers are not good politicians. I think most analytical people recognize the pure insanity and shy away from politics from this exact reason.
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If they did that Iowa State would get the Engineering college no question, just like Iowa would get the Business school if they limited it to one in state school. Duplication can be good though.
While I'd love to be on the "winning" side, it's not that simple. I would expect that due to the hospital and other medical resources, most forms of bio-engineering could be better-suited at EIU. EIU also has a fantastic driving simulator, which would help anchor some ME and virtual reality folks.
I think a better option than defining "the engineering school" and "the business school" and "the humanities school" (and etc...) would be to just reduce the specialty-overlap. For example, let both schools have ME departments, but get rid of the research overlap. Let ISU focus on CFD and biorenewables while EIU handles automotive.
There are other examples - ISU offers way too many courses/programs in the area of education, and it's ranked as average nationally. U of I's College of Education is much more highly esteemed. Why fund both?
I remember an outside audit done a few years ago concerning the state's expenditures and getting the most bang for the buck; the final report brought up academic duplication among the regents schools, but nothing was ever done...
because ISU's m/f ratio would be ridiculous without the education programs? also another case where there's probably more than enough demand to have programs at both schools. Duplication in and of itself isnt a bad thing when there's plenty of demand for it. Duplication is bad when youve got programs where theyre graduating 5 students in each major at both places. And there are some severe negatives to eliminating popular programs just to get rid of duplication, such as forcing a lot of transfers. People change majors, many more than once. Especially with the business college, a lot of people end up there from other majors.
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A lot of the humanities are where there shouldn't be duplication. Each school doesn't need to offer English or any of the foreign languages as a major. Of course, then you run into issues with people who want to double major.
You can't tell me there are a bunch of people in this state majoring in music, English, economics, women's studies, anthropology, international studies, etc. that each school needs their own program.
And I'm with isufbcurt...I'd kick my own *** before I went to Iowa, but business is big enough at each school I think a point can be made that each is necessary.
You can't tell me there are a bunch of people in this state majoring in music, English, economics, women's studies, anthropology, international studies, etc. that each school needs their own program.
And I'm with isufbcurt...I'd kick my own *** before I went to Iowa, but business is big enough at each school I think a point can be made that each is necessary.
