Calls By College Students For Tuition Refunds Are Growing Louder (edsurge.com) 175
Long-time Slashdot reader jyosim writes:
Students want their money back since their classes have moved online. Or they want partial refunds, and their calls have been getting louder. "Petition movements at more than 200 campuses are calling for partial refunds of tuition, typically asking for 50 percent back," reports EdSurge. "And some student protesters are now even filing class-action lawsuits to try to force colleges to return part of the tuition money."
Whether colleges should give back money depends on how you think about what colleges are selling. Is it a straight service like any other, so if students get less they should pay less? Is the most important thing simply getting into college, in which case the degree is the main thing, and students are still getting that? Or are colleges responsible for social mobility and helping students during this time by reducing tuition?
And is online education even worse than, say, sitting in the back of a large lecture hall with 300 students?
"I don't think we know enough about how much students were learning under the face-to-face model to calculate what an alleged loss might be under this new model," EdSurge is told by a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies higher education.
"He adds there has been a 'longstanding reluctance to try to figure out how much people learn,' and therefore 'it's quite difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what sort of drop off there might've been with the introduction of online.'"
Whether colleges should give back money depends on how you think about what colleges are selling. Is it a straight service like any other, so if students get less they should pay less? Is the most important thing simply getting into college, in which case the degree is the main thing, and students are still getting that? Or are colleges responsible for social mobility and helping students during this time by reducing tuition?
And is online education even worse than, say, sitting in the back of a large lecture hall with 300 students?
"I don't think we know enough about how much students were learning under the face-to-face model to calculate what an alleged loss might be under this new model," EdSurge is told by a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies higher education.
"He adds there has been a 'longstanding reluctance to try to figure out how much people learn,' and therefore 'it's quite difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what sort of drop off there might've been with the introduction of online.'"
Options (Score:5, Insightful)
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While we do get support from the Provincial government to cover Canadian students if this went away we would still 4-5 times cheaper to attend (factoring in estimated residence costs) and that's for institutes with a significantly higher ranking than the two instit
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Given the cost per year (US$70k) stated in the article to attend what look like mid-to-low ranked US institutions
My daughter is currently attending the University of California, one of the best universities in the world.
Her tuition is $10k per semester. Living expenses are about $5k per semester. So $30k per year at a top-ranked school.
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$90k for a 3 year course or $120k for a 4 year course is still completely insane.
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That's actually really not bad in living expenses for a major California city. Semester is about 4 months, so 1250 a month. If that covers her accommodations and food she is pretty set actually. Insane amount of tuition though.
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Loans for tuition should be paid back as a percentage of income, that way if the course turns out to be worthless the college is on the hook for not delivering value to the investor who backed the loan.
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If you really want a good education, take three quarters of your degree at a Canadian regional college with a transfer program, then transfer to a university for the last year. The college has much cheaper tuition, instructors who are evaluated based on teaching ability, and very small classes.
You miss out on the hobknobbing with the leaders of tomorrow though, so not so good for business or law.
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Universities need to cease running like businesses. Period.
And what model would you suggest?
The state-funded model: ...Because grades K-12 in the US have been so successful, we should double down? That's the problem with "pay through taxes" - the taxpayer starts voting on what's being taught, either directly or through budget drama. If Bernie's "Free College" tenet struck a chord with you, rock on...but based purely on the train wreck that is K-12 public education in America, you can't tell me that college is somehow magically immune from ending up in the same boat
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The state-funded model: ...Because grades K-12 in the US have been so successful, we should double down? That's the problem with "pay through taxes" - the taxpayer starts voting on what's being taught, either directly or through budget drama. If Bernie's "Free College" tenet struck a chord with you, rock on...but based purely on the train wreck that is K-12 public education in America, you can't tell me that college is somehow magically immune from ending up in the same boat. If we could get the existing public education system to a level that merely 'needs improvement' instead of 'is absolutely terrible no matter who you ask', then maybe there's a case to be made for trying to bolt on college. Until Betsy Devos gets the existing situation better, there's no compelling case to be made for adding college to the DoE.
My guess is that the K-12 system is caught in downward spiral where the parents with the most resources and the most care for their children's education leave taking the good teachers with them, creating an even worse school. Don't get me wrong, there's some very kind and idealistic individuals who want to be part teacher, part social worker but there's also many who just want to teach their subject and not deal with behavior issues, broken homes and otherwise disruptive and unreceptive pupils. It's hard to
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Option C they make it up somehow, let them repeat the missed semester for free later.
There also needs to be some kind of resolution for things like rent on student accommodation..
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By this logic inferior colleges should ask for the same money as top colleges. It's the same amount of credits, so the same quality, isn't it?
What are you talking about? The quality of the college is in the name that is handed over on the final piece of paper. That name is still there. It will still say "MIT" on the top rather than community college so you're still getting what you paid for.
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Both MIT and community college suffer the "Special Years". Please fire your HR guy if he thinks students from both are therefore roughly equivalent.
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That suggests that we really need to re-evaluate the entire field of higher education. If all they're doing is offering a limited trademark license they need to say so.
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That's kind of the point, isn't it? Do you think a credit hour of online course is worth the same as a credit hour of in-person course with in-person tutoring, study groups, campus activities, etc. at the same institution?
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Do you think a credit hour of online course is worth the same as a credit hour of in-person course with in-person tutoring, study groups, campus activities, etc. at the same institution?
It counts the same number of credits toward graduation.
I have a kid in college and another in high school. They are both e-learning from home. If anything, they are learning more because they aren't wasting time commuting and socializing.
So I guess I should pay extra.
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On the other hand, though it's been a very long time since I was nearing high school graduation and the college brochures were flooding my mailbox, at that time each and every one of them talked about the campus life and facilities. That suggests to me that the schools felt that was an important part of the experience and a justification for the costs.
The only open question then is what proportion of the value was campus life and labs and what portion was the lectures.
Missing information, are the professors
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His point is you don't go to the best school for the best education, you go for the connections you make that will actually give you the real opportunity.
If this was about education, it probably would be overall better if it was online. Especially if the content was made well and not in a rush.
These students may be getting an education online but they are missing out on the real reason of going to a big school, which was socializing.
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"Do you think a credit hour of online course is worth the same as a credit hour of in-person course with in-person tutoring, study groups, campus activities, etc."
My two kids just finished a college semester at home, and they still set up tutoring sessions and study groups (online mostly). They still have the same professor explaining the same material in the same way, they still get to ask the same prof questions, and IMO everything was the same except for the science labs and the campus activities. For th
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>And while the school's campus costs may have gone down a little (most things will still need to be paid for even with the campus is closed down)
That's a good point - but the students are no longer getting the benefit of those facilities, so I don't see how it's reasonable to expect them to pay for them, no matter how bad the hardship that imposes on the university.
Plus, as others have mentioned, the point of college is not to get an education - a library card and maybe some tutoring will get you one jus
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"That's a good point - but the students are no longer getting the benefit of those facilities, so I don't see how it's reasonable to expect them to pay for them, no matter how bad the hardship that imposes on the university."
True, and I didn't say students should. I already mentioned that I expect some colleges will declare bankruptcy shortly due to cost commitments that they can't expect students to pay for in future semesters, and colleges may also end up having to slash tuition costs for the next few sem
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An online course usually does offer personalized instruction. You can still study in groups of course. I am not sure what campus activities have to do with someone gaining knowledge of physics or English literature.
How about info for future employers? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or employers will only want to hire people who graduated in 2019 or before.
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Since a future employer is hiring with the idea that students got a certain level of education from the college.
Future employers number 1 will look at the score a student got and the name of the college on top of the certificate. Future employers number 2 will look at who employer number 1 was.
The idea that employers either assess or care about the "level" of education to the point where doing classes online vs having classes scheduled in person (I say scheduled as no employer has ever asked for my attendance record either), is just plainly absurd.
Group projects (Score:5, Insightful)
Lectures and discussions had other value than the lecture itself. Need to borrow notes? Find a study/fuck buddy? Way easier in person to strike up a conversation about class and get someone to share projects and do special home projects on the side.
So called remote learning misses the whole point of college: learning to be an adult and deal with the real world in a place where some failure is ok. Silly taped videos entirely miss the point. They should shut down and refund or hold as credit to next quarter/semester. The kids are losing out in all sorts of hard to measure ways both purely academic and life experiences.
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I did my master's degree almost entirely via distance learning. And yes, some classes actually did involve group projects. We just did it via Email and teleconferencing. (Of course everyone in the class was already in the "real world", so we were comfortable with all those things from work.)
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"So called remote learning misses the whole point of college: learning to be an adult and deal with the real world-
If your kids aren't already adults when they go to college then you've failed at your job. You shouldn't be expecting the school to finish raising them for you. They're already legal adults, or just on the cusp of being same, and you should have taught them what they need to know to be adults instead of sheltering them so much from reality that they don't know what it looks like.
Hard job? Yeah.
Re: Group projects (Score:3)
I can see that.
Re: Group projects (Score:2)
My programming partners of note: the first one I had for any project I thought I scored because he had a ton of coding experience I didn't have. Except I spent 3 weeks in the lab learning to code while he was at the dorm watching baseball season. I had to fix the code he wrote at the last minute and wrote some of it for him. The other one I had 2 partners. One had a family medical issue last minute. Me and the other guy agreed w
Wait, what??? (Score:4, Funny)
"He adds there has been a 'longstanding reluctance to try to figure out how much people learn"
Have people not heard of FINAL EXAMS???
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Also, "We can't calculate the value of the loss".... they didn't seem to have any problem calculating the tuition.
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Exams don't measure how much someone learned over 3 or 4 years, they measure how good they are at taking exams..
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Final exams this semester were a shit-show to no end. Pretty much all the students were cheating to no end -- which forced a lot of instructors to make their exams even harder to compensate. I actually had a student connect with me and tell me they felt pressured to cheat because everybody else was, and it was throwing off the curve. Students would join large discord or facetime sessions and "group take" exams. Kids would post questions on sites like Chegg and Qulzlet.
Pretty much, I don't know how much
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That sounds like fatally faulty final exams. Perhaps another reason to demand one's money back. "Unfit for purpose" is usually valid in court.
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That depends on the exam. The ones that properly test knowledge tend to be more laborious to mark so they're often disfavoured. And any exam necessarily tests your ability to work under pressure. Some people consider that a feature, although students often do not.
Winning will be a Pyrrhic victory (Score:5, Interesting)
Universities can not refund tuition. They don't have the money. Every university is in a budget crisis right now. If you work for one, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This is a once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis outside of the experience of higher education.
You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of U.S. universities that have enough accessible cash on hand to refund a portion of last semester's tuition. Just reimbursing the remainder of dorm rent and meal plans has strained them to the limit. Nor can schools tap into their endowments like a giant bank account. That money can only provide an annual investment income that is already committed to other purposes.
Universities operate just like most businesses or households - the money is spent just as fast as it comes in. There are almost no cash reserves. The fixed expenses of running the university haven't gone away. Do you wonder why most universities are now announcing that they'll open their campuses this fall? Because they've all realized they can't afford not to.
Winning a lawsuit like this will be a Pyrrhic victory at best. The lawyers will take home millions. The students will get a "discount" on next semester's tuition that will quickly get swallowed up by tuition and fee increases needed to rebalance the school budget. The net result is that the students will indirectly pay the lawyers' share of the judgements without getting a dime of savings for their education.
People need to let this go. Last semester was an aberration that won't be repeated. The students have still earned their credit hours, and that's what will matter in the long run.
Re:Winning will be a Pyrrhic victory (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Winning will be a Pyrrhic victory (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a tenured professor at a fiscally trim state university.
Cutting into any of the revenue of the rather lean enrollment they may have in the fall will mean furloughs and layoffs, impacting the quality of instruction for all the students that do choose to keep paying and attending.
The school is under contract to provide the agreed upon classes. You as a tenured professor are under contract to teach those classes. If the classes are not being taught then the students need to be refunded and unfortunately you shouldn't be getting paid and should be getting unemployment like everyone else who can't work.
Re: Winning will be a Pyrrhic victory (Score:3)
I agree that if the classes were not being taught then those credit hours need to be refunded. However if they were taught and did cover the material then I personally see no basis for a refund.
Anyways, the main point is that universities are very different from small businesses. When there is a recession and employment picture shifts, many people choose to go to universities to up their skills or get that degree and to ultimately better compete in the job market. So universities are indeed a different worl
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The rest of the world is facing furloughs and layoffs right now.
I get the impression that a lot of colleges don't actually understand what's going on. The small business loans that protect payroll, for example, require that companies only furlough 25% of their employees. In the private sector, we're fighting to save the jobs of 75% of the employees in a small percentage of the businesses. The rest will be gone.
This idea that you can avoid furloughs and layoffs at your organization is insane. Comparing "extr
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This misses a very, VERY crucial thing, understood by most nations outside the US.
Educational institutions aren't SUPPOSED to be profitable.
Same with prisons.
Same with hospitals.
Forcing these things to act as if they have to operate on a profit perverts their very purpose, and often degrades their very functions very deeply.
And in the end, it makes each of them far, FAR more expensive to society, and each citizen in terms of net expense over time.
Ryan Fenton
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Was ancient Athens a services based economy in need of highly skilled labour?
Education is like infrastructure for a country. If you don't charge for roads you shouldn't charge for education either.
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This misses a very, VERY crucial thing, understood by most nations outside the US.
Educational institutions aren't SUPPOSED to be profitable
Most large US universities are registered as non-profits, so they don't earn profits by definition. They should, at the very least, be able to cover their operating expenses.
There are for-profit universities as well. Some are pretty bad. Some are pretty good. I know two people who got their degrees from the University of Phoenix (one a bachelor's, one a masters) and were happy with the whole procedure.
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People forget that one of the basic requirements of capitalism is competition. If someone (or something) is getting unreasonably rich it signifies an inefficiency in the market. The super rich are products of anti-capitalistic behaviour, but are ironically held up as triumphs of capitalism.
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Cool story bro. But no.
Services not delivered, money not paid.
If money not available then go bankrupt or beg for money.
Of course, it might be sad if schools go bankrupt, especially for teachers and unions. So I hope that you will support that the school will mortgage its real estate to other more responsible people that can provide cash to weather the storm. If that's not enough then the naming rights for buildings can also be mortgaged.
(I'm writing this assuming we're talking about a large private school t
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Tuition at a big university can easily push a billion dollars a year. There are universities with more than this in their endowments, but like he says, the money is usually locked up.
The ivies could probably refund a semesters tuition, along with handful of really rich non-ivies. I bet it's more than 5, but still not a big number. It would take a bailout from Uncle Sam to make it happen across the board. As much sympathy as I have for college students, there are
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Everything you say may be true except the last sentence:
"The students have still earned their credit hours, and that's what will matter in the long run."
Which made me want to say "Are you clear bonkers???". Credit hours are almost meaningless in any technical subject. You can't to Calculus 1B until you've mastered Calculus 1A, and getting credit for hours isn't worth jack shit in comparison.
I suppose if you're doing Literature of History then you might have a valid argument, but even there I'm not sure.
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Universities can not refund tuition. They don't have the money.
Universities operate just like most businesses or households - the money is spent just as fast as it comes in. There are almost no cash reserves. The fixed expenses of running the university haven't gone away.
The university was under contract to provide room, board, instruction, credits, etc.. to the student. If they don't provide what they promised, they need to refund the money. If the instructors are still teaching online and giving the students the opportunity to receive a similar instruction then that is a different story. But if the instructors are not teaching then they shouldn't be getting paid and that money needs to be returned to the student. If they closed the dorm then just like any other landlo
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They should agree to come clean about their budget and expenses in times like these, especially if they participate in federal student loans. If there's extra, then give refunds.
And I don't think students should have to subsidized furloughed athletic instructors, for example. If it's a position not needed during the isolation, then exclude it from the calculations. It's unfortunate for those in
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Universities can not refund tuition. They don't have the money. Every university is in a budget crisis right now. If you work for one, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
My university has been good about pro-rating non-tuition fees. I got two months of my parking pass refunded. I don't know why they didn't just keep the money. They still need to maintain facilities even though they can't let people on campus. They're still granting credit for completed courses and issuing degrees. I see no reason for them to return tuition. I admit that I can afford to write off $75 without much concern, being a part-time grad student studying for the sake of it and not dependent on family,
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Universities can not refund tuition. They don't have the money.
Correct. The larger picture is this is an effort by lawyers to tap into government's infinitely deep pockets by prompting still more Congressional borrowing.
The monstrous windfall to lawyers from lawsuits over this whole thing is just beginning. Don't get your hopes up Congress will do what it should: ban these lawsuits. Not when lawyers are a giant, politically-donating faction.
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The class of 2020 is probably fine. The class of 2021-4 are going to be the screwed up ones. 2020 is just putting the finishing touches on their degrees. The others are going to be handicapped for years by poor mastery of foundational material.
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That was my initial reaction, as well. But it apears they're talking specifically about tuition. And if it's just tuition, they're kind of getting what they paid for on that front.
Partial refund seems fair (Score:2)
If they lived on campus and paid for boarding, that should be refunded. All students should be refunded for the athletics fees and other fees related to campus life (typically called an "activity fee" or similar), as no one is on campus, and the athletic programs are presumably on hiatus. They are still getting an education and credits towards their degree. They should still pay for those credits.
European style education. (Score:2)
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Pretty simple answer, really. (Score:2)
No, European style education is not bare-bones, yet somehow our prices are much more competitive. Why is that?
Because the federal government tries to 'help' by making more money available, by way of grants and low-interest, unbankruptle loans, which has enabled colleges to raise prices by the amount of the 'help.'
The money available by this 'help' has increased at a rate far above inflation, so the cost of colleges has likewise increased. Sure, most of the colleges involved are 'non-profit', but the people running them still like high salaries, huge staffs, and fancy buildings.
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Easy loans, pushed by politicians who want to bleat about college participation rates, and loaned by companies who know Congress will pick up the pieces if it collapses, as guarantors of the loans, or even if not in some cases, allowed this large increase to happen, year after year, for decades.
Nobody wants to spend thousands extra for a silly car option, but a few tens of dollars a month more on a loan? Sign me up!
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Congress could shut these increases down tomorrow by refusing to guarantee loans to students at any university that increases its fees beyond inflation, or inflation minus 0.2% for a few decades to renormalize costs.
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Because the country and state governments pay for most (if not all) of the cost to run those institutions. In the USA, a state college may get between 15-20% of their budget from the feds and state government, where it used to be in the 70-80% in the 70's. The cost to educate a student in the USA has remained at or below the cost of inflation BUT the amount the states have contributed have gone way down, and the way that schools have compensated for that loss are by increasing the student's portion of the
Physical vs Virtual Classrooms (Score:2)
"I don't think we know enough about how much students were learning under the face-to-face model to calculate what an alleged loss might be under this new model," EdSurge is told by a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies higher education.
I think the biggest thing here isn't whether or not they are learning more or less in virtual classrooms, but the students getting what they signed up for and purchased. There are plenty of universities out there that were doing both virtual classes and even full degree programs online before this whole thing started. And that is an acceptable method of learning, with plenty of students passing and graduating using that method.
But if a student looks at their available options, and decides to go to a physica
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But if a student looks at their available options, and decides to go to a physical campus for in-person classes, then they should be entitled to at least partial compensation or refund if they change the classes to virtual half way into the semester. For whatever reason (maybe they wanted the discipline of going to class, maybe they learn better with physical interactions instead of virtual, etc.), they decided to take physical classes instead of virtual. Just like any other good or service, if I'm not getting what I originally signed up for and was agreed to (in this case, a class taught in-person), then I expect to get a partial/full refund. The same should be true for education.
If a student's professor changes mid semester, they generally don't expect a refund. As long as the education continues and is substantially the same then given the circumstances, I don't necessarily think they need a refund just because it switched formats. They should be given the option for an incomplete and the chance to retake the course later though. If the education stops or the dorms close then they definitely need a refund of what they did not receive.
Calif. State University issue (Score:5, Informative)
I just paid tuition for my son's Summer and Fall semesters at CSU. They forced us to pay for a student health center (closed), student union fees (closed) and sports program (canceled) as part of the tuition.
CSU needs to be sued to refund fees for services they have discontinued due to Covid-19 closures.
Additionally, his physics class had almost all labs canceled after the end of March. They're doing a piss poor job teaching online also with some instructors just lobbing homework assignments to the students.
It's unethical.
Sounds like justice to me (Score:3)
Just my 2 cents
Itâ(TM)s the experience (Score:2)
A major part of college is the life experience that being on campus provides. You meet people, make friends (many for life), develop teamwork skills, and mature outside of your parents basement.
And, as others noted, you have labs, lectures, and interactions with and mentor ship by professors.
Yes, you can learn online. But, itâ(TM)s not the same. And, you pay for housing that you no longer are receiving. There really is something to be said for the college experience.
My middle child graduated from c
If they do... (and we have a pricing problem) (Score:2)
Then then should do an all around refund, not just the students that have loans.
1) If your stupid enough to go to school and not do some planning to see how much you'll make at the end of school, then you probably shouldn't go to school. After you've lived on the planet for two decades, you should probably know enough to do your own planning. The government, or schools, or your parents shouldn't have to do this for you. You live with the consequences of where your money is spent and the way you spend your t
Do I deserve a discount? (Score:2)
I am enrolled in a masters program at a university that actually charges more for online lecture than on-campus (resident) tuition. Since I live within walking distance of the university I could theoretically attend on campus. Should I now ask for a discount because they're giving these on campus students a discount for the online coursework? Sounds to me like these students should owe the university a check for the free upgrade.
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What universe do you live in where an online degree is actually *more* prestigious?
It's not that at all. It's the fact that the resident tuition is significantly cheaper than the online tuition because the cost is subsidized by tax payers. It has nothing to do with prestige. They can charge more for online because the school is very prestigious and people from all over the world want to attend, even if it is just online. Residents who are doing online classes are doing so because they have a full-time job and the university has decided they can afford to pay the full price.
Get a refund, return the product (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't have it both ways, keep the credits and get your money back. If you claim you didn't learn as much as you should have, then you don't qualify to get the credit either. It's no different than dropping a class. Most schools have dates by which you can drop with full refund, other dates where you can drop for partial refund, and deadlines after which you get no refund.
Of course if they are asking for refunds for dorm rooms they couldn't use, or meal plans for which they got no meals, or gym accesses or athletics fees, all those should be refunded since services were not rendered.
Classes are more than credits (Score:2)
educators or accountants? (Score:2)
I like that the summary tries to pitch this as a discussion about "what are colleges really selling?" Are colleges selling knowledge that can be learned online or are colleges selling a network of people and series of experiences that create a fully functioning adult?
Now we look at the comments, and it's clear that neither of those arguments matters. We've immediately devolved into accounting and budgeting. The purpose and expectations of education apparently don't matter.
It makes you wonder whether many c
Let's see how serious students are about this. (Score:2)
Offer students the choice for a free semester providing they resit precisely the classes they had this past semester, and accept that it will set them back graduating by 6 months. Let's see how many students take the university up on their offer.
Next, less pay for working from home online (Score:2)
Imagine if employers asked to pay 50% less wages for people working online from home.
Colleges need to do SOMETHING (Score:2)
Refunds deserve more granularity (Score:3)
However if the class had a large lab component to it - especially labs that require equipment and safety measures that you cannot reasonably expect a student to have access to at home - then the universities should either be offering refunds for those courses or giving the students ways to complete them later at no additional cost.
Instead we're seeing - and possibly due to just poor coverage of the matter through the media - news of students who are shouting for refunds. A lot of students had courses interrupted that seriously threw off their academic and career plans, something meaningful should be done to help them. You can complete a math, history, literature, and many other types of courses online and at home. You can't reasonably do molecular biology, high energy physics, physical chemistry, and the like at home.
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You are getting something better (Score:4, Interesting)
...where are the tutorials and labs
We moved those online as well! Tutorials can be held as smaller groups connected over Zoom or Google Meet. Low-level labs were replaced by using a mobile phone app to collect sensor data (acceleration, rotation etc.) for simple at-home experiments with basic data analysis. Our higher-level labs were two thirds complete when the shutdown happened so I believe the last experiment was done by the TA and instructor and the data collected sent to the students for analysis.
As a result, our students got close to the full, regular experience and I suspect most others did as well. Online learning is different and requires different techniques but different does not automatically mean inferior.
Indeed, my approach to online learning has been specifically to use pre-recorded videos to replace lectures and then use the lecture time to run interactive tutorials for students to help them solve problem sets i.e. students will get more one-on-one professor and TA time to help with the material they have identified as problematic for them. While this works better in-person I would argue that even remotely this is better than the standard in-person lecture to 300 students that it replaced.
Re:You are getting something better (Score:5, Insightful)
As a result, our students got close to the full, regular experience and I suspect most others did as well...
Perhaps, but it is still substitute goods. Its not the same as the service they thought they were getting and agreed to receive when they signed up and paid - a product meeting the description of the contract is not just whatever the school wants it to be at a particular moment;
for example suddenly replacing lecture instruction with a self-learning project. When schools first came up with the idea to fundamentally change paid students' courses by moving them online -- the students ought to have been offered a new agreement and/or option at that time To either back out of the course to either finish it later/receive a refund and no credit Or to alternatively: agree to the fundamental changes in the product but still pay... the decision about any changes in the cost of the course should have been a part of an updated agreement Not something to be unilaterally decided by the customer later; just like the supplier should not be able to unilaterally decide to Keep the money the customer paid and change the product but call it OK to fundamentally switch the instruction to Online without receiving agreement and permission from the student including full agreement on the exact changes to the tuition for those courses, etc.
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you're better off looking at youtube videos made by people who dedicate themselves to explaining stuff in a way that people will understand. I'm responsible for training mentoring junior developers. Most graduates didn't learn shit from university labs. I've
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Yeah or all the sex and drinking in the dorms, half the fun of college was blowing off class and getting blown.
Re:Burden of proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Online learning done properly takes work and skill both from the faculty (and any support staff they have) and the students. Creating materials, setting up the course, planning things out, etc. and then actually you know, teaching the thing. Problem is that a large majority of faculty just aren't/weren't ready to teach online, they didn't have the materials, and quite a lot just said "well, I lecture 3 hours a week... so i'll just do 3 hour talking head videos". That is NOT good online education.
Students have to work - they have to put in the time early enough to get all the reading done, videos watched, homework done, etc. before deadlines. It takes a lot of discipline to be a successful online student/learner. And from what I've seen (why yes, I do work in education, specifically online!) most "traditional aged" students (ie, the average 18-22 year old freshman thru senior) really doesn't have it. Even seniors about to graduate, unless they've been doing online classes all along have gotten used to being spoon fed the critical stuff in class and may not have the discipline to do it FWIW college I work for has ~14k students, about half of which have taken at least one completely online class per term, 2000 or so take only online classes, and just about everyone takes one or more classes that are normal face to face but use our online course delivery platform for resources, notes, submitting assignmnets, posting grades, etc.
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I don't accept your claim that if they put in the work they'll get an equivalent value. I know that this has not be true for experimental studies of ebooks vs. regular books, and I expect that it's not true for video classes vs. lectures. You would need to do studies that proved that it was true before I would consider accepting that that part of the college was adequately replicated...then there's the rest of it.
Re: Burden of proof (Score:3)
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That is the thing - online education isn't new. Heck, we had our first 12 classes w/ 200 students online in the Fall '98 semester.
Even at the college I work for, the faculty who have been teaching online had no issues. The others.... well, it would probably have been better to cancel and refund or move students to sections where the instructor was already teaching online or using the online environment heavily (like my class - I lecture for 5-10 min, then the other 2+ hours are lab time). Shame, since we
Re: Burden of proof (Score:2)
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It is not up to the students to show that they are getting less than what the paid for. Colleges are claiming that online learning is an equivalent substitute and so colleges should be able to prove it, otherwise it's a classic bait-and-switch scam. And they can't prove it.
That's what final exams are for. To prove you actually learned the material required. Seems pretty straightforward for the colleges to prove that the same material was covered.
Re: Burden of proof (Score:2)
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This is quite confused. Universities do advertise campus life but this has financial implications for students who choose to live on campus and pay for stuff like room and board. Tuition pays for actual credits, more precisely for coverage of syllabus in classes the students elected to take.
So with this understanding of the breakdown... If students could not stay on campus and enjoy social life of a student then they need to be refunded that rent money and as far as I know many universities already did that
Re: Burden of proof (Score:2)
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Most professors actually taught live, for example on zoom. If you can attend a class, listen to a live lecture, interject your questions, talk with a TA and get personal feedback on your homework then how much is this different from in-person teaching? And how is this like youtube exactly?
"But it should be up to the students to decide if they still want this modified product" - totally agree. Any student should be able to and usually is able to dispute the quality of any class. If the class is found to be b
Re: Burden of proof (Score:2)
archery maybe keep that at an military school only (Score:2)
archery maybe keep that at an military school only as that may just be about the only place where it is might sorta of be kinda be useful.