Engineering majors may not be the only students dealing with differential tuition in the future.

As College of Engineering officials said the proposed differential tuition plan is necessary to lower the student to faculty ratio in the College of Engineering, other colleges at Iowa State with higher ratios have begun looking at similar tuition plans.

According to the ISU Factbook, the College of Business, for example, had a ratio of 49.3 students to one faculty member in 2004, the most recent year statistics were available for, while the College of Engineering has a ratio of 23.35 to 1.

Labh Hira, dean of the College of Business, said although no formal plans have been announced, the College of Business has begun looking at the possibility of differential tuition.

Hira said differential tuition is becoming very common at other universities around the country.

“As state funding declines, more and more schools are looking at differential tuition,” he said.

Hira had just returned from a conference of Big 12 business deans last week and said a majority of the deans already had differential tuition programs in place for their colleges.

Hira said colleges of business and engineering commonly have differential tuition plans in place because the cost of the buildings and faculty salaries are generally higher in those disciplines.

College of Engineering officials say differential tuition will also help maintain the prestige of ISU degrees.

According to past Daily staff reports, College of Engineering Dean Mark Kushner has cited lowering student to faculty ratios as a main goal of the tuition surcharge.

Kushner could not be reached for comment.

Diane Rover, associate dean of the College of Engineering, said differential tuition is necessary to maintain the high value of a degree from the engineering department. Under the current plan, an annually increasing tuition surcharge will result in a cost of $1,750 more per semester for engineering majors by 2009-2010.

Carolyn Heising, caucus chair for the College of Engineering on the Faculty Senate, said she and the engineering caucus members support the differential tuition plan completely.

Heising, professor of industrial and manufacturing systems of engineering, said the differential tuition plan would keep Iowa State competitive with other regional colleges.

“It will help us recruit more students and high-caliber faculty,” Heising said.

Rover said the faculty have already been pushed to do more research and teach more classes, which means students might end up suffering.

“We have a tradition of quality and excellence [to maintain],” she said. “We want all of our graduates to be proud of their degree from Iowa State.”

Rover also said that engineering classes cost around $600 more per three credit hours than is currently charged.

The bottom line, she said, was for students to ask if they want a degree which will be valued slightly less because it’s from Iowa State, or would they pay extra to maintain the high value of the degree.