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Message from the Dean

To strengthen the quality and competitiveness of its educational programs, the College of Engineering has proposed a tuition surcharge for junior- and senior-level engineering students.

The Board of Regents is considering a tuition surcharge of $1,750 per year for upper-level engineering students at Iowa State University. If accepted, the surcharge will be effective the fall semester of 2006 and will be phased in for currently enrolled students. A similar proposal from the University of Iowa College of Engineering is also before the Regents.

The surcharge will help defray the greater cost of educating engineers compared to other majors at Iowa State, due mostly to higher costs for faculty and facilities. A recent national study reported that each student-credit hour taught in engineering costs an average of $219 more than in other disciplines. In other words, an Iowa State engineering student and business student each pay the same tuition for a three-credit course in their program. However, it currently costs about $600 more to offer the engineering course. Extrapolated over an academic year, the annual differential cost of educating engineering students is about $3,000 per student. In the past, state appropriations offset some of this additional expense. State funding has been significantly cut in recent years, requiring new sources of revenue to cover this expense.

We are aware of the hardship an increase may impose on some, and through increased financial aid—some of which will come from surcharge revenues—we will endeavor to ensure that no qualified student is denied the opportunity to pursue an engineering education at Iowa State. However, for reasons of both educational quality and economic equity, a tuition surcharge has been long overdue.

As a land-grant institution of science and technology, Iowa State is charged with offering the citizens of Iowa an engineering education second to none. Among other factors, the quality of education is tied directly to student/faculty ratios. Engineering colleges with low student/faculty ratios have a high national ranking; institutions with high student/faculty ratios are ranked lower.

The current undergraduate student/faculty ratio in the Iowa State College of Engineering is nearly 22:1. By contrast, the average ratio among the top 50 engineering programs nationally is about 13:1 (9:1 in private and 16:1 in public institutions). Students at peer land-grant institutions enjoy an average ratio of 17:1. Clearly, we must reduce our current ratio. There are only two ways to accomplish this: reduce the number of students we serve, which is counter to our land-grant mission, or increase faculty, which requires new funding.

Surcharge revenue will allow us to implement undergraduate student/faculty ratios competitive with peer institutions. Not only will this afford Iowa residents a higher-quality engineering education, maintaining our tradition of excellence in engineering education will also help continue to attract out-of-state students. Our tuition, both in-state and out-of-state, will remain among the lowest in our peer group.

Equally compelling is the question of economic equity. Due to the greater expense of educating engineers, decreases in state support have effectively resulted in cost-shifting as general tuition increases have supported the budgets of more expensive programs—in short, the tuition of liberal arts and other majors increasingly subsidizes the education of engineers.

As a fitting analogy, schools of law and medicine charge significantly higher tuition than do graduate programs in the social sciences and humanities, not only because of the greater costs associated
educating lawyers and doctors, but also because graduates of legal and medical programs can expect significantly higher lifetime earnings than their peers in other fields. For this reason alone, students in law and medicine are usually expected to bear a greater share of the cost of their education without additional subsidy from institutional funds, let alone from lower-earning students in other programs.

Similarly, the higher cost of their education is more than offset by the economic advantages engineering students enjoy after entering the work force and even while they are still in school. For example, as part of their academic programs, undergraduate engineering majors have available internships and cooperative work experiences that pay them well in excess of what most non-engineering students can earn while enrolled in school. The average monthly salary earned by students in co-ops and internships is $3,200.

A comparison of earning potential reveals similar advantages for engineers. The average starting salary for the engineering class of 2005 was more than $50,000, higher than the starting salary
of other Iowa State graduates. Along with a lifetime earning potential of almost $1.1 million more than
non-engineers, this puts them in a far better position than others to bear the added costs of their own instruction.

Finally, even with the surcharge, the Iowa State College of Engineering still would have one of the lowest tuitions in our peer group. This is a bargain made all the better when you take into consideration the performance of our graduates in the competition for good jobs and starting salaries, as noted above.

Our students, the people of Iowa, and other stakeholders of our engineering college expect and deserve the best education we can provide; indeed, in an age when economies thrive based largely on their technological resources, such an education is not optional. By providing these additional resources, we will continue to meet our obligations to our young people and all Iowans.