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Originally posted by: Curious prof
"Are all those part time students more expensive?"

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If you think about it, they are.

Headcount, not FTE, determines "wear & tear" on facilities. Parking lots, common areas, etc., have to accomodate headcount. (I can argue that since virtually no part-time students are on-campus residents, full-timers actually put less "load" on some aspects of physical plant, such as streets & parking facilities. Student services, particularly areas like admissions & records, also have to accomodate headcount.

But state funding is based (more or less) on FTE.

Assume that the average part-time student takes 6 credit hours per semester. That means it takes 25 part-time students (headcount) to yield the same funding FTE as 10 full-time students. But those part-time students place 2.5 times the "load" on many critical physical plant, institutional support & student services functions.

Of course, the tacit assumption is that the university really doesn't provide the same services to part-time students (or that the part-time students aren't going to know that they deserve those services).

Full-time students pay more tuition & fees per capita during any given fiscal year. That's simple arithmetic. Part-timers may ultimately pay a slightly higher total amount, but it's spread over more budget years & budgeting isn't done over 6 or 8 year spans. In order to make up the difference, additional part-time students have to be enrolled, creating even more pressure on the "headcount sensitive" operations of the institution.

Part-time students place "unusual" demands on scheduling, since they are more likely to require nontraditional class times. For high-demand, core classes, this isn't a big deal, but those part-time students still need to take courses that are difficult to "make" at the most traditional times. This means that sooner or later, providing class schedules to meet the needs of part-time, nontraditional students becomes very un-cost-effective.

Moreover, when students "progress to degree" on a normal -- or close to normal -- schedule, they enter the workforce faster & presumably become good alumni who support the institution with gifts & donations. Part-time students typically fail to "connect" (I think that's been discussed ad nauseum here) & even when they do graduate, they tend not to become "good" alumni.

In an even broader sense, if the purpose of a university is, as the SFT crowd likes to say, to produce workers who earn better wages & pay more taxes, it is obviously more cost effective to get them through the "mill" faster.

The long & short of it is that, yes, part-time students ultimately cost more. No matter how you slice it or dice it.