2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Equality of access to college gets a lot of attention. The media, policy makers, and academic literature often focus on the convoluted and secretive admissions process at elite schools and overall college affordability. What has not been discussed in detail is how university tuition and fee structures are making different college degrees more expensive and are also charging different tuition rates to students earning the same degree. These tuition and fee structures can have an outsized impact on engineering students and can work counter to efforts to provide targeted financial aid support. We are motivated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-4) for equity in education and chose to adopt the conceptual framework for equity described in Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education. As such, our work uses the impartiality measures put forward in the handbook.

This research paper seeks to answer the question: How equitable is the impact of the block tuition structure? Block tuition is the practice of charging a flat rate for a range of credit hours. For example, at , students are charged a flat rate for enrolling in 12-15 credit hours. This rate is equal to the cost of 12 credits at the per credit hour rate so that a student who enrolled in 15 credit hours would have paid for 12 and gotten 3 credits for free. The effect is a tuition discount of up to 20% (paying for 12 of 15 credits), encouraging full-time enrollment near 15 credits per semester. This tuition structure provides a discount that is not accessible to all students and penalizes those who cannot enroll in 15 credits due to constraints on their time or finances, limited course options, or prerequisite requirements.

Engineering degree programs tend to stymie block tuition’s accessibility for several reasons. First, engineering programs require more credits (typically 5-25 more semester credits) than other programs. Second, engineering students tend to have a higher number of wasted credits that do not satisfy specific degree requirements. Lastly, there is very limited flexibility, resulting from strict prerequisite requirements within engineering curricula. The result is that most engineering students take less than the optimal number of credits per semester to maximize the block tuition discount or take additional unused course credit to get to 15 credits. Even without the increasingly common policy of variable tuition rates between different programs, engineering degrees require more credits and take longer to complete. This results in students paying higher tuition for additional terms at lower credit loads and has a significant impact on the total cost of the degree.

Student data from University was examined to compare both the effective amount of block tuition discount by graduation for different groups of students who graduated with a 4-year degree. Impartiality measures are presented based on Pell Grant eligibility, gender, race, and transfer status for both engineering degreed graduates and all other majors. These measures focus on the average discount per credit hour resulting from the block tuition structure for each student. This analysis shows that the block tuition structure has a disparate impact on the different groups, providing a financial advantage to some demographics over others. Transfer students, students of color, and Pell-eligible students are found to benefit the least from block tuition, paying more per credit. This work explores the systemic inequality created by this previously unconsidered mechanism and will hopefully result in a much-needed conversation about the disparate impacts of tuition structures.