Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures • Hacker News Board

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#51

Post by alistairSH » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

albntomat0 wrote: post #38

jawns wrote: post #28

The reason there is such a large premium for on-campus education versus online universities is because on-campus education is an experience as much as it is a service. If you're only interested in mastering the content, then online learning may be the place for you. That's why we see so many people pursuing online courses for their master's degrees and when they return to school later in life. They just want the cont…

I agree with your overall point, but one of the issues with online learning is the credential received isn't the same value as an in-person one. There are an increasing number of exceptions like the Georgia Tech online masters, but I'm not aware of a high-end online bachelors degree.

Harvard Extension Campus offers quite a few. While not viewed as favorably as an on-campus degree from Harvard, still valued higher than an on-campus degree from many other institutions.

https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal...

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#52

Post by jerf » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #28

The reason there is such a large premium for on-campus education versus online universities is because on-campus education is an experience as much as it is a service. If you're only interested in mastering the content, then online learning may be the place for you. That's why we see so many people pursuing online courses for their master's degrees and when they return to school later in life. They just want the cont…

The problem is, if you're going to fall back on that perspective, Real Life (TM) has all those things too, and it will continue to do so, for essentially free. There will be clusters of that sort of thing somewhere, just as there are "retirement communities" and "bedroom communities" and such. Universities certainly aren't bringing anywhere near enough value for their marginal improvement on those matters vs. what would exist without them to be worth decades of crushing debt.

If you surrender on what the Universities have to offer intellectually, then you're putting them in a position where they're going to be competing with generalized social forces that can create similar clusters of demographically-concentrated appeal without having to pay administrators and deans and speech police and all that stuff, and the universities will never be able to win carrying around such baggage.

"And I don't think that atmosphere or energy can be easily recreated virtually."

It can't be recreated virtually. But it can be recreated without a "University" attached to it.

If what the unis were offering was, you know, proportional to the gain, maybe 1/5th to 1/10th the cost they are now, then maybe it would still be worth it. But paying gold-plated prices for "social experiences marginally better than what you could put together yourself if they weren't there" is not a sustainable plan, or an adequate defense for their practices.

Viva la disaggregation.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#53

Post by wtvanhest » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

jkingsbery wrote: post #26

I don't know about the legal question, but I think universities are setting themselves up for pain by arguing that the online experience they've been offering isn't substantially different from the in-person experience they had been offering. It's easy to imagine people calling their bluff on this, choosing to do remote learning even after COVID-19 goes away if it will save $100k+ over 4 years, and a subsequent contr…

Universities are not arguing this. If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these lawsuits. The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all employees…

Your opinion is reasonable from a contractual standpoint, but, contracts aren’t all that matters.

Universities have a variety of tools they use to lock-in students. If the universities gave students the ability to take the semester off and get a refund before it started your argument would be strengthened. Most universities did not offer that option (if any).

When you build an org with a massive cost structure, you cannot survive big risks. We are seeing it playout in a number of markets, but education is about to be changed forever

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#54

Post by josephorjoe » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

jkingsbery wrote: post #26

I don't know about the legal question, but I think universities are setting themselves up for pain by arguing that the online experience they've been offering isn't substantially different from the in-person experience they had been offering. It's easy to imagine people calling their bluff on this, choosing to do remote learning even after COVID-19 goes away if it will save $100k+ over 4 years, and a subsequent contr…

Universities are not arguing this. If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these lawsuits. The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all employees…

> it’s not reasonable to demand universities operate at a loss to provide the remote education at a rate less than it costs them to operate

it's not reasonable to expect students to pay for the costs of operating a university when all they receive is a glorified khan academy experience.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#55

Post by CogitoCogito » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

jkingsbery wrote: post #26

I don't know about the legal question, but I think universities are setting themselves up for pain by arguing that the online experience they've been offering isn't substantially different from the in-person experience they had been offering. It's easy to imagine people calling their bluff on this, choosing to do remote learning even after COVID-19 goes away if it will save $100k+ over 4 years, and a subsequent contr…

Universities are not arguing this. If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these lawsuits. The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all employees…

> In my opinion, it’s not reasonable to demand universities operate at a loss to provide the remote education at a rate less than it costs them to operate (which I suspect may be happening already in some cases).

I think it depends on the endowment. If the University in fact has a lot of money, then I think they _should_ be operating at a loss while taking advantage of their cushion. But yeah for the majority of universities not in that situation I do agree with you.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#56

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

Anecdata from my little corner. My 'non-profit' university's president is at 800k, his VP is 500k and multiple other admin officials in similar range. It is hard not to have a bitter taste as they just offered the students $500 grant application for their COVID19 trouble.

If there is one good thing about this pandemic, it is shining a light on all this.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#57

Post by andreilys » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

jkingsbery wrote: post #26

I don't know about the legal question, but I think universities are setting themselves up for pain by arguing that the online experience they've been offering isn't substantially different from the in-person experience they had been offering. It's easy to imagine people calling their bluff on this, choosing to do remote learning even after COVID-19 goes away if it will save $100k+ over 4 years, and a subsequent contr…

Universities are not arguing this. If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these lawsuits. The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all employees…

Georgia tech offers a fantastic online CS masters program for $6.6k (1/6th of the cost of on campus degree).

I highly doubt that these universities have offered even close to a 5/6th refund to their students.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#58

Post by weehoo » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #37

jawns wrote: post #28

The reason there is such a large premium for on-campus education versus online universities is because on-campus education is an experience as much as it is a service. If you're only interested in mastering the content, then online learning may be the place for you. That's why we see so many people pursuing online courses for their master's degrees and when they return to school later in life. They just want the cont…

> It's dorm life, it's extracurriculars, it's meeting people and forming friendships and hanging out with them outside of class time. that's a community. You shouldn't have to need to pay to be part of a community. By gating this behind an expensive college tuition fee, it causes separation in society and is a cause for the inequalities of opportunities in the world. IMHO, tertiary education should be "free" (that is…

So your degree is free unless other people are willing to pay you to have it? In which case it costs you money? You already did society a favor by studying something other people care about instead of studying something only you care for. Why not just raise income taxes? Serves the same purpose without making people salty about college major choice. You already pay an effective 50% tax rate between income, sales, gas, registration, property taxes, etc. when you’re in that “sweet” spot of earning a great wage but not being wealthy. No one ever gets rich off paychecks.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#59

Post by alistairSH » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #44

Colleges should just open up. Young students are low risk that they're unlikely to be very sick if/when they contract disease. There will be some old or unhealthy staff members that can be protected. California and NY have stronger lock down rules, but people should just transfer to Texas, Florida places that are more open.

While true that younger people are less at risk than older people, that risk is non-zero and significant.

You also ignore that students don't isolate themselves within the walls of the college. They are a part of that community, using dining and retail facilities, traveling home, visiting nearby cities, etc. That puts their parents and families at risk, locals at risk, etc.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#60

Post by mdszy » Fri, May 29, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

jkingsbery wrote: post #26

I don't know about the legal question, but I think universities are setting themselves up for pain by arguing that the online experience they've been offering isn't substantially different from the in-person experience they had been offering. It's easy to imagine people calling their bluff on this, choosing to do remote learning even after COVID-19 goes away if it will save $100k+ over 4 years, and a subsequent contr…

Universities are not arguing this. If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these lawsuits. The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all employees…

Ah yes, why won't anyone think of the poor administrators who get paid obnoxious salaries for doing effectively none of the labor that goes into providing an education for the students.