Proposal would link tuition to major

Shane Wade
Opinion Editor

If you think about it, universities are a bit socialistic in nature.

Despite all other factors, including our major, we all pay the same amount for our education. It’s been that way since the beginning of higher education in America and, for better or for worse, it’s worked.

Except Florida wants to change that.

Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, in his pursuit to decrease the cost of college for the state, has established a task force to recommend changes to the current education system. One of their recommendations is to adjust the cost of college by majors: The more needed a major is, as relayed by the forces of the invisible hand and supply and demand, the less students would have to pay for their expenses. Students who choose to major in liberal arts, however, would find their tuition cost increased.

In a conventional sense, they’re spot on. The less independent a student is, the more reliant on government aid they’ll be and the less marketable your academic major is, the less marketable you are. It all makes sense, if you approach the issue from that rather myopic scope.

But Gov. Scott, in his quest to quench the thirst of the free market’s need for marketable college graduates, ignores a host of factors that level the job market for college graduates, regardless of their major.

A major is just a declaration of a student’s field of study; English majors can do math and take hard science courses, but they choose to formalize their studies within the English language and literature. Furthermore, there’s numerous research studies that show a person’s major isn’t correlated with their post-graduate level success.

A study by PayScale Inc., for example, found that, on average, history majors that pursued jobs in business fields earned just as much as their business major counterparts. In fact, where a student goes to school might be more indicative of their success. The same study found the English majors who graduated from Harvard University earn a median of $44,500, compared to English majors from Ohio State University, who earn a median of $35,000.

A U.S. News article from earlier this year listed the top seven factors employers consider in hiring new graduates. Those factors include communication skills, various types of experience and “a good attitude.”

What’s not on that list?

Any insinuation that your major matters.

In asking, “How many jobs do you think there are for anthropologists in Florida?” the governor highlights his own ignorance of how academia works and mischaracterizes the liberal arts as an academic vestigial. Majors mean nothing if the student doesn’t learn to market themselves as unique for an employer and apply their major and their education in a marketable manner.

In our increasingly globalized world, we can not risk our moral and cultural standing by punishing those that choose to major in less profitable fields.