Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds • Hacker News Board

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#201

Post by 0d9eooo » Mon, May 04, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

hysan wrote: post #198

Not too surprising that the experience wasn’t good. Having taught in-person and online before, I can guarantee that these students ended up with a sub-optimal experience at best. Teaching online is drastically different than in-person and is not something you can easily pick-up in short notice. Made worse is that they were in the middle of a syllabus designed for in-person instruction. How material is delivered, what…

I've not taught online, but I have a close colleague who was doing it for years pre-pandemic, and another colleague who did a bit of it and my impressions are the same.

My sense is that major universities doing online stuff have video production crews (from Communications etc) and everything is heavily edited and redone. It's more like a television show than anything else. Much more preplanning, and interactions with the students are much more structured.

It's not like some zoom meeting off-the-cuff with your professor who had to switch gears on the spot along with you, while you're uprooted like a minor refugee and living who knows where that you didn't plan to.

Students will be back in the fall. The risks of returning do not approach the risks of not returning for most undergrad-age students. This is especially true that universities will be prepared this fall, and were not in late winter/early spring.

My sense is that a lot of the schadenfreude and resentment here on HN and elsewhere is due to a general sense that something is really very wrong with higher education at the moment, at least in the US, and wanting to see it radically reformed. I agree, but I think the problems are not really related to the value of in-person degree education vs what you can get online. The real issues have to do with the cost of the education in general, how degrees are viewed in vocational settings, and costs and spending within higher educational institutions. Until those things change, it will take a lot more than SARS-CoV-2 to change things.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#202

Post by jameslk » Mon, May 04, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

> Colleges, though, reject the idea that refunds are in order. Students are learning from the same professors who teach on campus, officials have said, and they’re still earning credits toward their degrees. Schools insist that, after being forced to close by their states, they’re still offering students a quality education.

In summary, colleges are only in the business of pimping professor time and selling credits to a piece of paper. Apparently access to those expensive campus buildings and all the friends you made along the way wasn't part of the deal. Therefore, no refunds are necessary.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#203

Post by Mirioron » Mon, May 04, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

hysan wrote: post #198

Not too surprising that the experience wasn’t good. Having taught in-person and online before, I can guarantee that these students ended up with a sub-optimal experience at best. Teaching online is drastically different than in-person and is not something you can easily pick-up in short notice. Made worse is that they were in the middle of a syllabus designed for in-person instruction. How material is delivered, what…

Are universities prepared for something like this though? Do they have some kind of pandemic insurance that will cover the costs of the entire student body if the government shuts the university down? Because I can see that being a very costly insurance.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#204

Post by hysan » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

0d9eooo wrote: post #201

hysan wrote: post #198

Not too surprising that the experience wasn’t good. Having taught in-person and online before, I can guarantee that these students ended up with a sub-optimal experience at best. Teaching online is drastically different than in-person and is not something you can easily pick-up in short notice. Made worse is that they were in the middle of a syllabus designed for in-person instruction. How material is delivered, what…

I've not taught online, but I have a close colleague who was doing it for years pre-pandemic, and another colleague who did a bit of it and my impressions are the same. My sense is that major universities doing online stuff have video production crews (from Communications etc) and everything is heavily edited and redone. It's more like a television show than anything else. Much more preplanning, and interactions with…

I know Columbia, way back when I attended, had some classes with the lectures online that way. However, your response is showing a lack of understanding of what I mean by teaching online is different. If you go with the heavily edited lecture video style, that is likely not done real time. Instead, it becomes a watch offline experience in which case my gut reaction would be to flip the classroom. If the instructor wasn’t already using that technique, they would likely have to redo their entire syllabus and teaching style.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#205

Post by Mirioron » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #95

bko wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bryan Kaplan argues that the majority of the value of a reputable college is signaling. > Suppose your law firm wants a summer associate. A law student with a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford applies. What do you infer? The applicant is probably brilliant, diligent, and willing to tolerate serious boredom. If you’re looking for that kind of worker—and what employer isn’t?—you’ll make an offer, knowing full well…

There is no doubt signaling at play, but one important signal conferred by graduating is “can slog all the way to completion of a multi-year, somewhat difficult, often tedious project, following somewhat arbitrary rules along the way.” That’s close to actual job requirements in a lot of places.

That is indeed the big signaling aspect Kaplan talks about. It's still signaling, that is, what the student learns during that is considered less important.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#206

Post by munchbunny » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

skocznymroczny wrote: post #11

supernova87a wrote: post #2

I remember wondering aloud at MIT/Harvard putting their courses online for free for anyone to listen to, and saying, well what is the value add then of paying to physically go to college? I guess we're going to find out whether the networking, friends, social aspect is worth it. There's also something about the competitive aspect of seeing other people in person do better than you or have better ideas than you. Which…

I know this might not be received well by the HN crowd, but I feel like the classes and networking are secondary, the main value of a reputable college is having a reputable college you can put on your résumé.

I highly disagree with this one. I have one of those brand name diplomas, but the piece of paper is largely irrelevant. Nobody has cared or even asked about it since maybe 3 years out of college.

As a restrospective thought experiment, if you offered me that piece of paper in exchange for a student loan the size of my college education, I would turn it down. But if you offered me the 4-year experience I actually got for that same loan, without the brand name, I would take it in a heartbeat. (You can't actually separate the two since the brand name in part enables the college to implement the product.)

Aside from actual academic knowledge like practice with low level OS and network concepts, here's what I got from those four years that I think made a concrete difference in my life and career:

1. The personal mentorship I got from a professor, who I met during a summer internship, but he was from my comp sci department. It was serendipitous that the two circles collided, but it was crucial, and, to the point, it was enabled by the college network.

2. Meeting people through friends in college who would become co-founders or connections into other jobs.

3. Taking very specific classes on soft skills, such as writing workshops. One in particular, which I took early in college, was like getting two in depth code reviews a week for twelve weeks, except it was for my writing. That course made me fluid and precise at writing. I still suck in comparison to many of my former classmates who write professionally, but it made me a stand-out effective communicator in engineering. In retrospect I would have paid 1/4th of a semester's tuition in a heartbeat for that course (took 4 courses that semester).

4. Being surrounded by people who weren't engineers, who were formidable doers and thinkers, about other fields, such as global health policy and politics. I still remember getting my ass handed to me in a dinnertime debate by someone who was obviously more knowledgeable and more thoughtful about public policy than I was. Getting intellectually smacked down by friends regularly taught me humility and appreciation for the value of expertise in other fields.

5. Spending four years in the company of driven people with high standards. For the people who embrace it, it rubs off on you the same way working on a strong team does. It demystifies high performers and teaches you that you can turn yourself into one.

6. Due to spending time around people who had money/power, you learn to not be (as) intimidated by those people. It's a crash course in walking and talking like an "elite" whether or not you are one.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#207

Post by pm90 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

adamiscool8 wrote: post #51

pm90 wrote: post #14

To be honest, I’m more worried by the effect it is already having on immigration and the calls from certain politicians to “reduce Asian students”. Besides the disgusting racism involved in that view, as someone who attended Grad School in US, I can confidently say that Asian Immigrants are some of the brightest and hardest working students I met and I was incredibly happy at this country’s future that the student po…

That level of dependence on immigration by schools is foolish, short-sighted, and unsustainable. Forced immigration reductions, whether self-imposed or politically enabled, would ideally provide a much needed opportunity to refocus on developing the domestic talent pipeline and improving the general accessibility of American graduate programs to Americans.

There is nothing stopping this from happening right now and indeed there are various kinds of outreach programs designed to get Americans interested in higher education today. Graduate school requires both aptitude and desire; It is a nativist myth to think you can simply swap out immigrants for Americans. You would have to do some nasty forced education kinda shit and there is little evidence that would work either.

It’s possible that if the population of the US approaches 1 bil or so there may be enough students to fill in (if that ever happens). Otherwise thinking that refocusing on domestic students will help is a pipe dream; there are simply not enough Americans interested in Graduate school.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#208

Post by bachmeier » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #199

bachmeier wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the restaurant is having a bad night A "bad night" because it was hit by a tornado. Your wording implies the universities did something wrong. It's not like they could have done anything differently. They weren't responsible for the pandemic and they were legally obligated to shut down. > I'd say the institution should do at least something to make you whole I'd say it is unreasonable. They're not asking for a…

I have no idea whether there's a legal basis for the argument, I'm just stating my opinion on what would be a fair outcome. > They want all the benefits plus a healthy refund. I don't think this is an accurate portrayal of the situation, unless you think the entire value of a college education is instruction, grading, and the piece of paper at the end. the school I went to was very much like this: I went to class, go…

There's no doubt that the on campus experience is valuable. "all the benefits" was a bad choice of words. Maybe a better way to say it is that they want to choose which parts they get to pay for (the credits, the material, online interaction with the instructor, grading, homework, exams) but then be refunded for other parts related to the on campus experience. I'd say that's reasonable if and only if the university saved money as a result. Not only did they not save money, it cost them more money to shift formats. I want to reiterate that I'm not opposed to a refund, but I do oppose the refund they're asking for.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#209

Post by fluidcruft » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

hysan wrote: post #198

Not too surprising that the experience wasn’t good. Having taught in-person and online before, I can guarantee that these students ended up with a sub-optimal experience at best. Teaching online is drastically different than in-person and is not something you can easily pick-up in short notice. Made worse is that they were in the middle of a syllabus designed for in-person instruction. How material is delivered, what…

What resources did you find helpful for learning about teaching online?

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#210

Post by red_admiral » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #199

bachmeier wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the restaurant is having a bad night A "bad night" because it was hit by a tornado. Your wording implies the universities did something wrong. It's not like they could have done anything differently. They weren't responsible for the pandemic and they were legally obligated to shut down. > I'd say the institution should do at least something to make you whole I'd say it is unreasonable. They're not asking for a…

I have no idea whether there's a legal basis for the argument, I'm just stating my opinion on what would be a fair outcome. > They want all the benefits plus a healthy refund. I don't think this is an accurate portrayal of the situation, unless you think the entire value of a college education is instruction, grading, and the piece of paper at the end. the school I went to was very much like this: I went to class, go…

Colleges who charge $60k a year tend to advertise the student experience and everything that's not "just business" quite a lot to prospective applicants.