It’s been two weeks since Carleton began its online fall semester, and many students feel as if the university’s promise to deliver a high-quality online education worth its cost in tuition is not being met.
Since the announcement back in May that Carleton would conduct its fall semester entirely online, students have demanded reduced tuition. In response, the university maintained that the same tuition costs for a normal in-person semester were necessary to deliver a high-quality online semester.
My doubts that this was true began early on.
After learning my classes would all be online, I asked myself the same question I assume many other students asked themselves: Would an online education be worth coughing up thousands of dollars of tuition?
In pursuit of an answer, I sent an email to Carleton’s Financial Services back in May. In this email, I explained I was trying to decide whether I should return to school and wanted to know what made the most sense for me financially. I asked whether the tuition for a full online course load would cost less than a full, in-person course load.
The reply: “Tuition should be the same whether it is being offered online or in-person.”
Unable to comprehend the logic behind this statement, I sent a followup email asking the school to provide me with a reason why tuition wouldn’t be reduced for online classes.
As I saw it, online classes would not offer the same quality education as in-person classes. While I don’t know the details of the university’s financial budget, I thought the operating costs of an online semester would be significantly less than an in-person semester.
A month later, I received an emailed response from Carleton’s COVID-19 Response Team that simply directed me towards the “Finances” section of their COVID-19 FAQ page.
I found myself staring at the question, “Why does online learning cost the same as face-to-face instruction?”
In essence, the university writes that “designing virtual classrooms and online opportunities for students required multi-million-dollar investments” in new online services. Course instructors, markers, academic advisors, and other student supports are also listed as a significant cost for the school.
While not happy about having to pay full tuition for an online semester—minus the few hundred dollars saved by opting out of services like the athletics fee and U-Pass—I optimistically (and perhaps foolishly) accepted this answer.
So, I signed up for fall courses, paid my tuition and made plans to move back to Ottawa.
But since the very first day of classes, I have been disappointed.
For synchronous courses, the first 30 minutes of Zoom classes are often spent watching the professor try to figure out how to admit people into the call or figure out how to share their screen.
The asynchronous ones consist of professors posting a few links to readings or external videos to cuLearn, and then quizzing us on that content each week. In those courses, I’m essentially teaching myself.
I’m not alone in this experience. After posting to Carleton groups on social media asking about other students’ experiences, the sentiments in the over 20 comments I received were generally confusion, stress, and disappointment.
Students described an overwhelming workload to compensate for the lack of in-person teaching, falling behind on coursework because required links are posted late, lecture times being changed on a whim, unengaging delivery of low-quality course content, professors recycling recordings from previous years, professors constantly struggling with technology, and an overall lack of value.
If this is the case, what did those “multi-million-dollar investments in technology and experts” go towards?
There is no new technology to invest in—at least, I have yet to see it. Professors continue to use cuLearn as the main hub for course work and there’s no way all that money is going into a premium Zoom subscription.
Despite my peers and fellow students telling me about their struggles learning online, I have yet to hear of anyone utilizing the resources developed to “help students understand and navigate the online learning environment,” as Carleton says.
I am most disappointed to see many professors and teaching instructors struggling to teach their courses online.
Of course, this is not completely their fault, as the university had stated that Teaching and Learning Services would work with course instructors to deliver online courses successfully. But, it is evident the university has not offered instructors the adequate resources and training for a successful year online.
Since it is unlikely our tuition will be reduced any time soon, the university needs to recalibrate and actively work to fix the issues at hand. It needs to deliver the high-quality experience we were promised.
It’s time for the university to either make changes to meet that promise or acknowledge that the current quality of online education warrants lower tuition rates.
For the thousands of dollars we paid to continue our degrees in the middle of an economic crash, it’s the least we deserve.
Featured image by Arthur Daniel.
