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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

#151

Post by coryrc »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #148
coryrc wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to create living communities for young people. You are allowed to discriminate against people younger than 55, but not against any other age criteria. It's another example in the unending list of losses in this generational war.

What does this mean, and can you provide examples? What do you mean by young people ? I thought intentional communities were a thing in many / most developed democracies?

https://www.55places.com/blog/yes-age-restricted-communities...

I left young people open on purpose. I could not create a housing community and only rent to people under 23 (which is mostly what undergraduate University is), but I could if I only allowed people over 55.

You are allowed to rent or buy things as a group, but the transactional costs make it rare.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#152

Post by coryrc »

Avicebron wrote: post #149
coryrc wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to create living communities for young people. You are allowed to discriminate against people younger than 55, but not against any other age criteria. It's another example in the unending list of losses in this generational war.

Genuine question, is it illegal if the people are older than 18? Possibly with resident adults acting in some supervisory role. I'm imagining dorm like satellite communities for collective remote online learning.

I would doubt requiring the individuals be able to agree to contracts would be illegal, this effectively would be 18+.

But you won't get young women joining if you also have to allow 55-yr-old male leches live next door. In University this is rare, but SROs can't discriminate in the same way.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#153

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

coryrc wrote: post #151
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this mean, and can you provide examples? What do you mean by young people ? I thought intentional communities were a thing in many / most developed democracies?

https://www.55places.com/blog/yes-age-restricted-communities... I left young people open on purpose. I could not create a housing community and only rent to people under 23 (which is mostly what undergraduate University is), but I could if I only allowed people over 55. You are allowed to rent or buy things as a group, but the transactional costs make it rare.

Oh, yes, I see now what you mean.

Yeah, I sort of strongly disagree with this sort of legislation but also understand why it exists.

I think society would benefit from being more dynamic in this regard. Tricky though.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#154

Post by alistairSH »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #120
alistairSH wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Interesting, it's a BS in liberal arts but offers CS as a field of study? Seems odd.

From my limited research (considering the Masters of Liberal Arts program), the difference is the mix of required courses and capstone/thesis work. The number of credits and core subject courses are similar.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#155

Post by vkou »

wtdo wrote: post #90
adminprof wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't frame it as getting rid of diversity and inclusion, that's just usually how the roles are defined. But you're missing my point completely (maybe intentionally?). I'm just saying that we should talk about specific administrators or administrative units, not "administration is too big". So let's talk about that, not whether your framing of my framing of the university's framing is accurate. And you'll see that…

No, it does not make sense for the Dean of Athletics to handle rape cases other than for them to kick out the athlete that has been convicted of rape by a court of law after an investigation by the police. An argument can be made as to whether those are University police or non-University police, but the investigation shouldn't be done by the Dean or any other administrator. If the Dean of Athletics has questions abo…

> No, it does not make sense for the Dean of Athletics to handle rape cases other than for them to kick out the athlete that has been convicted of rape by a court of law after an investigation by the police. An argument can be made as to whether those are University police or non-University police, but the investigation shouldn't be done by the Dean or any other administrator. If the Dean of Athletics has questions about federal regulations, that's what lawyers are for, which don't need to be in house administrators either.

A student's behaviour can generally get them kicked out of a university, despite not being convicted by a court of law. Just like you can be fired from your job, without a jury-of-twelve-peers conviction, if you've broken your employer's code of conduct.

So, no, the dean's job in this case is to not to simply grep through the list of state felons, and match them against the student roster. There's broader discretion in the kind of censure that private individuals need to apply, that does not begin and end at the courts.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#156

Post by Avicebron »

coryrc wrote: post #152
Avicebron wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, is it illegal if the people are older than 18? Possibly with resident adults acting in some supervisory role. I'm imagining dorm like satellite communities for collective remote online learning.

I would doubt requiring the individuals be able to agree to contracts would be illegal, this effectively would be 18+. But you won't get young women joining if you also have to allow 55-yr-old male leches live next door. In University this is rare, but SROs can't discriminate in the same way.

I'll cede we don't want 55-yr-old leches next door to young adults. But I'm not sure it's necessary it has to be an SRO, if from what I understand is a term for low income/homeless focused housing. There should be a way for the lower priced remote college tuition to pay for the housing and requirements for only remote attendees to live there. But maybe I'm not seeing something.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#157

Post by LanceH »

usaar333 wrote: post #112
LanceH wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A force majeure contract absolves them of delivering their service. It doesn't mean they get to change their service however they see fit and keep all the money. People up front for an in person semester. If they really want to go the force majeure route, they should return the money up front and renegotiate the rest of the semester.

Sure, they can return some money but who knows how much was already allocated, especially with distance learning continuing. I got no refund from my kid's preschool for similar reasons. This is a really uphill legal battle

Then they can file bankruptcy and students can stand in line as creditors.

"I already spent it" isn't a legal defense for taking money and not delivering services.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#158

Post by gumby »

austinl wrote: post #136
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…

Less than half of the students from my alma mater graduate within four years. When I learned this I was dumbfounded. The incentives are just not correctly aligned. The university is able to profit off of students taking fewer credit hours and staying more semesters, and academic advisors actively encourage this!

I learned (when MIT shut down my former dorm) that they track the six year graduation rate (doubt anyone is attending all of the six years). That seems more sensible.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#159

Post by Ididntdothis »

TuringNYC wrote: post #132
pkaye wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW for California state employees including the public universities, the information is public so you can actually look it up. https://transparentcalifornia.com/agencies/salaries/#univers...

Possible Lesson Learned: Skip Leetcode and CTCI, study for the Berkeley Police Department exam! https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/berkeley/?&s...

That's actually very valid. I know somebody who works at a crime lab with >100k salary, lives in a cheap area of CA and can retire at 50 with full pension. Pretty sweet gig and if they want more money after retirement they can do some government contracting and consulting which is very well paid.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#160

Post by tengbretson »

adminprof wrote: post #147
tengbretson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can't trust these organizations to make the right (and obviously needed) cuts in order to still realize their value to society in the face of reduced funding, then they don't deserve to be the ones teaching our children in the first place.

I think we just keep going back to the same issue -- people agree that administration is too big. But if you break it down to actual positions or administrative units, it's not clear there is any agreement. There is no such thing as "right cuts" because that implies it's clear which parts of administration should be cut. Same with government. Government waste is bad? Of course! Trim unnecessary government spending an…

What I'm getting at though is that it's a distributed problem and that I frankly don't care if everyone gets it right.

Shut off the money first. Some of the universities will make their cuts in academic and research departments. That's fine. I don't expect we'll hear too much from them after a while. Good riddance.

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