Advocates for low-income and minority students have criticized differential tuition, saying that even a modest tuition or fee increase can leave students scrambling to pay for school.
And in some states, governors have encouraged so-called differential tuition, or program fees, as alternatives to across-the-board tuition increases.
More colleges may be opting for differential tuition in response to plummeting state appropriations, Inside Higher Ed reported: Up until 1980, differential tuition rates within an institution were largely unheard-of, although some colleges did charge laboratory fees associated with certain courses.
Differential tuition may be another factor to consider as you prepare for college.
"Differential tuition is a concern in our conference," said the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat.
Gov. Crist has, however, reversed his opposition to a differential tuition raise of 15percentt for three of the state's research universities.
The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, seems set against differential tuition, fearing that it would price poorer students out of the best schools.
New York is one of the few major states to shy away from differential tuition pricing, which allows research universities, which are more costly to run, to charge more.
Few researchers have studied differential tuition's effect on students.
University leaders say differential tuition hasn't hurt their enrollment or graduation rates.
