I hate to start yet another tuition-fee related thread since there are already at least two others, but I think this warrants its own discussion.

I'll just copy and paste what started in the other thread:

Originally Posted by MacAttk

to play devil's advocate, our tuition rates compared to some other places (especially the united states) are far cheaper. i find the $800 grant very generous actually and on top of bursaries and grants from the government from osap, you really do save quite a bit that you never have to pay back. lets start being a little more appreciative and a little less "omg i want more money". no one will be happy till tuition is free.. lets be real here

And my response:

Originally Posted by Entropy

http://registrar.mcmaster.ca /CALEN...nt/pg2013.html

Easy for the guy in the third-lowest tuition bracket to say. If I was paying 79.6% of what I was paying now and in school for only four years, I probably wouldn't be complaining as hard either.

On an unrelated note, looking at this page again I didn't realize how little of a discrepancy there is between faculties. Arts and Science, Health Sci, Humanities, Nursing, Science, and Soc Sci are share the same four-level tuition brackets. Commerce, Eng, and the Eng-related B. Tech and Comp Sci are all in higher brackets. If you're lucky enough to be in Eng, you also get the pleasure of taking (and paying for) more units a year too, and possibly taking a fifth year.

Thank god I'm not on res/paying rent on top of that. For Eng students who are, I have a newfound appreciation for your dedication.

I thought the spread would be a little wider, since I assume Science (including Health Sci and Arts and Sci) students have to use similar facilities and equipment that we do, but...nope, it costs them the same as it costs a Soc Sci student.

And because of how Mac (and other universities?) price tuition, it costs engineers more to take the exact same classes that Humanities students take.

Maybe MacAttk isn't as wrong as I thought. I'm now a little less upset at high tuition rates, and more upset at the fact that for some reason, my faculty pays about 25% more than almost any other faculty, in addition to taking more courses per year, for often more years, and paying more for the same courses.

...Does anyone else think this is some f'ed up stuff? Actually, maybe this topic deserves its own thread.

Anyone know who I can ask about this?

It's so weird that Commerce have a similar courseload to the rest of us (science, etc) and still pay higher tuition o__o

I don't know if this has anything to do with why tuition prices are higher for different faculties, but it might have something to do with the services you get on campus. For example, Engineers have more co-op, internship, etc., opportunities than some other faculties, they have more buildings on campus, they have a more hands on program (by this I mean, Engineers have classes like CAD design where they get to work on computers and create something, compared to Soc Sci where we only have lectures and tutorials), stuff like that. Another example is that Engineers may soon get an entire building dedicated to Experiential Education (http://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/excel/index.html), while Social Sciences literally only has two staff members that work on Experiential Education.

I don't know. That could have a lot to do with donations or something. I'm just guessing, I don't know much about any program other than my own.

a liberal arts student needs some books to learn, and an engineering student needs fancy multi-million dollar scanning electron microscope for labs. I'll be dammed if the engineering student has to pay a little more for his/her education.

Originally Posted by lux

a liberal arts student needs some books to learn, and an engineering student needs fancy multi-million dollar scanning electron microscope for labs. I'll be dammed if the engineering student has to pay a little more for his/her education.

Thats more of research thing mostly used for non-undergraduate purpose. I can't come up with anything beyond comparing the values of two degrees and what you can do with them after you're finished school. Its a toss up between lab costs and paying crazy busy professors for their time, in my opinion (incentive to teach rather than just research all the time). Maybe the actual dollar value to run the services that each and every student at McMaster is pretty much the same, and offsetting the cost by burdening the technical/health/etc students is the fact the people going into those fields are more likely to not only have the money, but student loans are geared towards providing more money for people who have a higher dollar value education?

Either way, I think its a good and fair model.. social science students are most likely only paying the amount they are paying above what it should cost in order to have classroom space, where the alternative would be increasing acceptance of the bigger money makers (health/eng/tech).

tldr: students probably cost the same amount to keep happy (profs, labs, tas, space) but the university is justified in making some pay more tuition and some less because of the value of the degree

Mmm, I agree although I find the designation of 'value' to degrees arbitrary and somehow redundant. But please, don't mind me, that's just my opinion.

Everyone in Commerce is fully aware we are getting screwed.

Originally Posted by Kathy2

I don't know if this has anything to do with why tuition prices are higher for different faculties, but it might have something to do with the services you get on campus. For example, Engineers have more co-op, internship, etc., opportunities than some other faculties, they have more buildings on campus, they have a more hands on program (by this I mean, Engineers have classes like CAD design where they get to work on computers and create something, compared to Soc Sci where we only have lectures and tutorials), stuff like that. Another example is that Engineers may soon get an entire building dedicated to Experiential Education (http://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/excel/index.html), while Social Sciences literally only has two staff members that work on Experiential Education.

I don't know. That could have a lot to do with donations or something. I'm just guessing, I don't know much about any program other than my own.

We pay an extra fee outside tuition for co-op services and student and donors will majorly fund the ExCel building IF it happens. I have always understood that we have more labs and stuff that require equipment, but for some of our classes, we pay for lab kits. The discrepancy for me is between engineering and science as sciences do just as many (and maybe more depending on stream) labs. Our labs are on computers and a lot of reusable equipment (beardboards, gears etc) whereas chemistry and biology labs usually have exhaustive materials.

I wonder if maybe it has something to do with the cost of professors? I have no clue what they make, but maybe an Engineer prof makes more per year than a Humanities prof, which means the school has to pay them more ...?

Originally Posted by MacPack

We pay an extra fee outside tuition for co-op services and student and donors will majorly fund the ExCel building IF it happens. I have always understood that we have more labs and stuff that require equipment, but for some of our classes, we pay for lab kits. The discrepancy for me is between engineering and science as sciences do just as many (and maybe more depending on stream) labs. Our labs are on computers and a lot of reusable equipment (beardboards, gears etc) whereas chemistry and biology labs usually have exhaustive materials.

I think we have more expensive equipment in engineering then in science so we pay more, but i cant see why science is the same as soc sci.

On the other hand i kind of see why business students pay more. I imagine that in order to get people from private industry that have lots of experience, they will have to offer more money to get them to move (our marketing prof keeps telling us how he was Ceo of something as well as high up in another company) so to get them to come they may have to offer more then what other faculties pay their staff.

Besides that i have no idea

I understand that the business profs need to be properly compensated, since they could potentially be making a fortune as CEOs or running their own businesses. But being a professor is a relatively "safe" job, while running your own business involves quite a bit of risk and I think that this should be considered too.
I'm also curious why business students at Mac pay about $2000 more per year for their degree than business students at other schools, who pay similar fees as students from other faculties in their university.

Here is my attempted response at this: Someone from MES will be able to provide a better explanation but the Faculty of Engineering is very much distinct in every set of the way. All engineers graduating are "accredited" so their degree is different from every random Science or SocSci Graduate, in a way it's almost a Professional degree...other professional degrees like Law and Medicine have much much higher tuition fees. Both Law and Medicine mind you might seem to be "graduate"/second entry schools in Canada but in countries like England are programs you can enter right after highschool. So the argument I'm making is that the accreditation puts Engineers on a higher plane than other faculties, which I guess also explains the conjecture based "Engineers are almost guaranteed a high paying job after graduation" theme I hear.
Secondly, when Engineers take courses in other Faculty(eg: Economics or Communication Studies) those faculties don't receive the higher tuition fees paid, instead it's the same revenue that any SocSci student would pay for that Econ course.

I've emailed the SRA Engineering Caucus Leader about this to see if he can provide a better answer.

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Here is my attempted response at this: Someone from MES will be able to provide a better explanation but the Faculty of Engineering is very much distinct in every set of the way. All engineers graduating are "accredited" so their degree is different from every random Science or SocSci Graduate, in a way it's almost a Professional degree...other professional degrees like Law and Medicine have much much higher tuition fees. Both Law and Medicine mind you might seem to be "graduate"/second entry schools in Canada but in countries like England are programs you can enter right after highschool. So the argument I'm making is that the accreditation puts Engineers on a higher plane than other faculties, which I guess also explains the conjecture based "Engineers are almost guaranteed a high paying job after graduation" theme I hear.
Secondly, when Engineers take courses in other Faculty(eg: Economics or Communication Studies) those faculties don't receive the higher tuition fees paid, instead it's the same revenue that any SocSci student would pay for that Econ course.

I've emailed the SRA Engineering Caucus Leader about this to see if he can provide a better answer.

While I agree with your explanation, it doesn't explain three things:

1) Why are nursing fees the same as Sci/ArtSci/HthSci? Should they not be higher considering they receive accreditation similar to engineers (IIRC), while most science degrees give you nothing.

2) Why are there discrepencies in how much students pay for the same courses? As you mentioned, the faculties doesn't recieve the same amount of money, so why is that extra cost being pushed onto the students?

3) Why is commerce higher than Sci/ArtSci/HthSci? As far as I can tell, most commerce students are in the same boat as science students (need more schooling to get a half-decent job) and don't use anywhere close to the same amount of resources (I'm presuming labs are very costly). Yet they pay more.

Originally Posted by RememberTwce

amount of money, so why is that extra cost being pushed onto the students?

3) Why is commerce higher than Sci/ArtSci/HthSci? As far as I can tell, most commerce students are in the same boat as science students (need more schooling to get a half-decent job) and don't use anywhere close to the same amount of resources (I'm presuming labs are very costly). Yet they pay more.

I was trying to research this specific one last night and found many articles concerning the rise all over the country in Business fees. One explanation given was that fees per credit are often highly dependent on costs to the faculty for running a certain course divided by the number of students. For Engineering/Nursing etc there might be equipment/lab costs(for example they have to pay licensing fee for many non pirated - expensive softwares). In the business school on the other hand the higher costs are presumably because of what they have to pay and aspire to pay the best faculty members who are often enticed and brought in from the private sector(where they earn alot more). I remember reading a list a few years ago where all Mac faculty members earning over $100k were mentioned and quite a few of them were Business profs.

Originally Posted by RememberTwce

1) Why are nursing fees the same as Sci/ArtSci/HthSci? Should they not be higher considering they receive accreditation similar to engineers (IIRC), while most science degrees give you nothing.

2) Why are there discrepencies in how much students pay for the same courses? As you mentioned, the faculties doesn't recieve the same amount of money, so why is that extra cost being pushed onto the students?

1) good catch

2)One of my biggest issues. Unfair I paid approx 1435 for an intro to religion class when a so sci pays approx 1026. Sucks on the larger scale when lookin at doing a minor in something