Since it costs universities more to offer some majors than it does to offer others—because professors in a certain field command higher salaries, or their department requires expensive equipment—why shouldn’t students have to pay accordingly? At some public universities, they do.

The New York Times reports that, beginning this fall, business majors at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will pay $500 more each semester than their classmates, and upperclassmen in Arizona State University’s journalism school will pay an extra $250 per semester. Last year, the University of Nebraska began charging engineering students an extra $40 for each credit hour.

College officials acknowledge that the result may be to force lower-income students into less-expensive fields. At the University of Kansas, which has been charging higher rates for business and engineering degrees since the early 1990s, anecdotal evidence suggests that poorer students are steering clear of those majors.

But officials at public institutions that use such differential pricing say their hands are tied: Raising tuition across the board is simply not politically possible. —Jennifer Ruark