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Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

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Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#71

Post by Cldfire »

elwes5 wrote: post #48
acomjean wrote: post #9

I was taking a class that transitioned online. (University extension school, biostatistics). So the networking and campus related activities don't relate to me. At the extension school, some classes were taught online already (this one was in person only). I felt the teaching staff made a pretty huge effort to get things online and running well. I'm sure they weren't getting paid more to make the transition. There wa…

My guess the tuition will be similar in price. However, if it were me going to college at this time I would seriously consider skipping a year/semester if they did that. Get a small time job somewhere and help get ahead of the loans I already racked up. But that is just me. It became crystal clear to me a few years ago that these schools had gone off the rails price wise. My wife was taking 1 class. The book was more…

I would love the option to be able to skip a semester or two of college, but unfortunately if I made that choice I'd lose all of my scholarships and it would end up costing me more than whatever I'd make in the meantime :(

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#72

Post by adminprof »

mdszy wrote: post #60
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While in general I agree that there are too many administrators at many universities, this type of argument is ineffective without pointing out exactly which administrators. And I find that once you try to do that, no one agrees which administrators should be cut. Do you want to cut the administrators responsible for diversity and inclusion? Or the administrators responsible for tech transfer? Or the Dean of the College? Or administrators that manage grants? Or administrators of admissions, or athletics, title IX, or school of medicine?

Give us some specifics to discuss. Because while almost everyone agrees administration needs to be trimmed, if everyone just wants to keep the ones they think are important and there's not much overlap, then there's clearly no way to do this.

Same as when people say "government should stop spending on useless things, government should be smaller and trim the fat / pork barrel spending". Yeah of course when you put it that way, who wouldn't agree with that. But when you get specific, "government should reduce veteran's benefits, national parks, border security, obesity research, food stamps, etc." well that's when it's not so easy.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#73

Post by barry-cotter »

dragandj wrote: post #65
barry-cotter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_share_agreement > An income share agreement (or ISA) is a financial structure in which an individual or organization provides something of value (often a fixed amount of money) to a recipient who, in exchange, agrees to pay back a percentage of their income for a fixed number of years. ... > Common Concerns Indentured Servitude > However, advocates of ISAs contend tha…

Someone who does not make any money doesn't need to care about student loans either. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the debt collectors can only collect what exists. They can't force you into the debtors prison. As long as you don't have anything, you don't have to worry about anyone coming after you (in the USA).

If you have assets you need to care about debt but the same is not true of an income share agreement. You can have assets without income from sources other than selling those assets.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#74

Post by zbrozek »

ben7799 wrote: post #10

This is just the straw that is popping the college bubble. My Alma mater has 15 administrators who make 2-3x more than the President did when I graduated. The President makes $5 million+. The VP/Dean of HR makes > $1 million. Administrators took a 5% pay cut. Lots of professors are furloughed or laid off. The school did all kinds of shenanigans to hang onto as much tuition/board/food money as they could. Students are…

It was obvious while I was a student that the ratio of administrators to faculty was ridiculous. And the growth rate ratio between them was 3:1. At no point was it clear to me what real value they were adding. I was the captain of a more capital and real-estate intensive than average student group, and it was absolutely infuriating to try to figure out how to get anything done. There was always some new bureaucrat condensing out of the ether who needed to be appeased. No meant no, but a yes was never enough.

To be quite honest, I see the same thing in my professional work. Everyone feels that their problems deserve more headcount. And heads make work, justifying more heads. Further, those heads want to get promoted, so they make-work to justify that too. And to compound the problem, people try to magnify their power and impact by becoming gatekeepers. More people to say no and more overhead and drag to every action.

It's unfortunately difficult to ask and to honestly answer why we do things and whether those things are worthwhile. It's even harder to take corrective action even if you admit that what you're doing is not worthwhile. I think it's one of the pillars of cost disease that is nibbling away the on-the-ground productivity of Western societies.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#75

Post by ouid »

barry-cotter wrote: post #23
ouid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indentured servitude, and expressly forbidden in the United States.

No it isn’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_share_agreement > An income share agreement (or ISA) is a financial structure in which an individual or organization provides something of value (often a fixed amount of money) to a recipient who, in exchange, agrees to pay back a percentage of their income for a fixed number of years. ... > Common Concerns Indentured Servitude > However, advocates of ISAs contend tha…

If it's not dischargeable in bankruptcy, it's indentured.

The relevant question is "what is it acceptable to own?", and if your answer includes "human capital" your answer includes "people" and that makes you pro-slavery.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#76

Post by francis_t_catte »

cjmaria wrote: post #47
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which college is this, if you don't mind me asking? I mean the dean of HR is making 1million ...

This sounds strikingly similar to what's going on at my school, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. President has a 5mm+ salary and took only a 5% pay cut while laying off (not furloughing!) 60 faculty members.

It's worse than that for Shirley Jackson. as of 2015 her monetary compensation was:

  $945,000 in salary
  $276,474 in bonuses
  $31,874 in nontaxable benefits
  $5.8 million in deferred compensation
plus a 19,500sq.ft. mansion. :|

p.s. hope you enjoy troy :)

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#77

Post by jdkee »

vmchale wrote: post #22
ben7799 wrote: post #10

This is just the straw that is popping the college bubble. My Alma mater has 15 administrators who make 2-3x more than the President did when I graduated. The President makes $5 million+. The VP/Dean of HR makes > $1 million. Administrators took a 5% pay cut. Lots of professors are furloughed or laid off. The school did all kinds of shenanigans to hang onto as much tuition/board/food money as they could. Students are…

If anything the pandemic seems to have made people less patient with self-justifying administrators. I don't think this can continue. Professors/teachers add value for students, you can't cut them indefinitely when they are now so much of the reason that the online college experience has value.

In the telecom industry we had an adage, “Always cut staff before line.” Staff were overhead but line produced revenue. The same applies to teaching but it is not in the self-interest of administrators to cut staff.

They will soon find out the truth.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#78

Post by paulcole »

renlo wrote: post #36
paulcole wrote: post #11

Investors should step in and pay the kids off (since these lawsuits are either guaranteed losers or will take years to settle). Then in exchange take a % of their future earnings. Vary the % and timeline based on the degree they're seeking.

What's in it for the students though? Would just make things more expensive for them.

They don't pay out of pocket for school right now.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#79

Post by paulcole »

ouid wrote: post #13
paulcole wrote: post #11

Investors should step in and pay the kids off (since these lawsuits are either guaranteed losers or will take years to settle). Then in exchange take a % of their future earnings. Vary the % and timeline based on the degree they're seeking.

This is indentured servitude, and expressly forbidden in the United States.

he said confidently and incorrectly

https://studentloanhero.com/featured/coding-boot-camps-defer...

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#80

Post by jerf »

jawns wrote: post #62
jerf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

The counterpoint to your argument is that if it is so easy to create those types of communities for much less money than what universities are charging, why hasn't it happened? I would guess that it's a combination of 1. not being as easy as it seems and 2. network effects. Because of the latter, you would basically have to persuade a large number of students to make the switch at the same time for them to feel as if…

"why hasn't it happened?"

Who says it hasn't? To some extent, it has. Interest groups and clubs of all sorts already exist, and non-university-affiliated sports are already pervasive.

But the rest of the answer is why I was talking about "what would exist if the universities didn't". Right now, the unis are sucking up a lot of the oxygen in that space. But it's a mistake to think that if they stop doing it, it will all disappear. It may partially disappear, but it will most assuredly not all disappear. There will be places where young people congregate. There will be roommates. There will be interests that emerge and get organized. Existing sports leagues can expand.

If the demand exists, supply will appear. It doesn't even have to start from scratch, there's plenty of non-University resources that could simply expand to meet the demand.

And the resulting system probably won't put you into decades of crippling debt.

For that matter, have a chat with some of your school acquaintances that didn't go to university. You may find their lives aren't as horribly impoverished as you thought. There's also a bit of a false mental image that the choice is either the shining lawn and conspicuously happy people in the university or the darkness where lightning flashes and a grim factory job from which there is no respite, and in reality the choices are not even remotely that stark. In both cases, a lot of it is what you make of it. And, you know, you'd best hope universities aren't some sort of unique fount of such activities and joys, because you will be joining the rest of us in the non-university world after graduation, you know. It isn't actually that horrid or bereft of opportunities.

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