Traditional students rebelling against online education

[Merlin]

I was meaning to post these articles a few days ago, but forgot until I saw one again tonight. The articles discuss how traditional education students are adapting (or not) to online education.

The first article highlights students who are bringing lawsuits (with the assistance of opportunistic legal firms looking to rake in big money from class-action lawsuits) against their colleges for classes being moved to online. They are asking for their tuition to be refunded in full or part (while still retaining credit for completing the courses I assume). The claim of these suits is that online education is inferior to a traditional education (by nature of the lower costs other schools charge for example), and therefore these traditional students are being overcharged. The students and their families are also asking for secondary non-tuition fees (like dining, dorms, and on-campus services) to be refunded, which at least makes sense to me since they can't use the services they paid for during the SIP.

The second article mainly focuses on online proctoring and see it as a violation of their privacy. The main student highlighted in the article is complaining that she sees any use of a webcam as a violation and that schools should trust that people won't cheat. (LOL) The article also talks about how people are paying others to sit in for them to complete their courses for them (among other ways people are already cheating). It also discusses the ways proctors are trying to combat it.

I figured some of you might be interested or at least entertained by these articles. I found them interesting... particularly coming from an online education focus. Some of the quotes scream about these students' sense of lost privilege (during the middle of a pandemic), but there are some good points too. Some of those points are things we've seen and commented upon in this forum.

[rachel83az]

You're not getting any "more" out of a B&M education, except maybe it's easier to form study groups. B&M schools do overcharge, but that has nothing to do with distance learning vs. in-person education.

I do agree with the idea that dorm fees, dinging fees, etc. should be refunded. There's no reason for the university to keep that money except to line their own pockets.

[Merlin]

You're not getting any "more" out of a B&M education, except maybe it's easier to form study groups. B&M schools do overcharge, but that has nothing to do with distance learning vs. in-person education.

It's a perception thing. There are still a lot of people who believe that people cannot learn unless they're in a traditional classroom environment. Many also believe that all online colleges are just diploma mills, so the people who attend those kinds of schools can't possibly be getting a real education. People who brag online about how quickly they complete degrees at online schools don't help in the latter point and just serves to drive the point of the naysayers.

We all know that there are strengths and weaknesses to online education, but that doesn't mean the rigor isn't there or that online courses mean a lower quality of education (or even that they charge less because they know their programs are inferior). It can mean that, but it doesn't have to. There are plenty of low-quality B&M schools and courses as well.

The thing is, I think this could potentially be a turning point in online education. Particularly as big schools start to adopt it more, driven in part by things like COVID-19. So these lawsuits could potentially become crucial in legitimizing online education in the eyes of the masses, depending on how the legal and political battles pan out.

[Stoic]

You're not getting any "more" out of a B&M education, except maybe it's easier to form study groups. B&M schools do overcharge, but that has nothing to do with distance learning vs. in-person education.

I do agree with the idea that dorm fees, dinging fees, etc. should be refunded. There's no reason for the university to keep that money except to line their own pockets.

That's not true. Most of the people in the degree programs mentioned in this site, me included never actually have a teacher to student relationship.

The online degrees from these schools are essentially check in the box pieces of paper. You never understand a concept to a higher level like a person who has to debate that concept in front of a group of other bright students at a place like Rollins college or Berkeley, nevermind the Ivy's.

You'll never get a professor the quality of someone like Ken Gemes, or Barbara Oakley and have personal access to them and take some of their habits and mannerisms. You and me are essentially just paying for these things and never going through the indoctrination period and learning how to defend ideas and make serious arguments in competitive environments. 

If you're talking about going to community college and comparing that to a degree online where you log in post some stuff on blackboard and log off then yeah, it's the same. If you're comparing a person attending UCLA, Berkeley, Yale, UT Austin and list goes on, it's not even comparable if what you want is to learn and shoot off to a competitive environment and great career. I bet there are no millionaires in this forum, I do bet there's a bunch of underemployed people or career workers. Now go check the amount of millionaire's coming out of Stanford.

So yeah no misinformation please. Master programs from top schools with face to face meetings and video conferencing are the exception.

[rachel83az]

Being able to "defend" something that you've learned in school doesn't necessarily mean that you learned it any better or any worse than someone whose degree didn't include that component. They are different skillsets and having the "debate" skillset checked off doesn't mean that you got a better education by default. It just means that you learned how to debate.

I'm not saying debating isn't a valuable skill to have - it is. But debating doesn't mean that you know a subject better than someone else. One needs only to look at politics to see this. There are tons of lawmakers who have no idea about what they're debating (the lawmaker who said the internet was made of tubes and the lawmaker who thought Guam was going to tip over from overpopulation come to mind) but their skills in debating are such that they are often able to BS their way into getting their way regardless of this fact. One needn't go to school to learn how to debate, either.

Also, if you go to a prestigious (and expensive) school then you are more likely to come from a family that has money in the first place. Money makes money. Sure, there may be plenty of millionaires who graduated from Stanford, but how many of them came from families that had absolutely no money in the first place? Not many, I'm sure.

[Stoic]

Being able to "defend" something that you've learned in school doesn't necessarily mean that you learned it any better or any worse than someone whose degree didn't include that component. They are different skillsets and having the "debate" skillset checked off doesn't mean that you got a better education by default. It just means that you learned how to debate.

I'm not saying debating isn't a valuable skill to have - it is. But debating doesn't mean that you know a subject better than someone else. One needs only to look at politics to see this. There are tons of lawmakers who have no idea about what they're debating (the lawmaker who said the internet was made of tubes and the lawmaker who thought Guam was going to tip over from overpopulation come to mind) but their skills in debating are such that they are often able to BS their way into getting their way regardless of this fact. One needn't go to school to learn how to debate, either.

Also, if you go to a prestigious (and expensive) school then you are more likely to come from a family that has money in the first place. Money makes money. Sure, there may be plenty of millionaires who graduated from Stanford, but how many of them came from families that had absolutely no money in the first place? Not many, I'm sure.

Yes, find me 5 successful politicians who got their bachelors online though? Atleast they are in a position that they have to debate something. [ I'm checking Rand Paul real quick, this is the criteria at a minimum,  attended Baylor then went on to Duke, Ocasio went in person to Boston U, yeah this people don't do online]

I'm not sure if you want to get into this type of argument right now and go after the good ol brick and mortar vs online school argument. There's a reason they are rebelling, as of 2020 successful and ambitious people do not get their bachelors online if they are in their early twenties to mid twenties.

Arguing against this is just seeing things from a bias perspective. Online bachelors are for people like me and most of this website. In their 30s and up trying to check in the box to move up in the workforce pyramid or get that point covered.

If i was attending Stanford at 21 years old and they moved my classes to an online only environment, I would complain too. Seeing it in any other way but what it is, is just covering up the truth. It's not the same. Even the professors themselves will tell you that.

[natshar]

These aren't online courses. They are poorly planned online coruses there is a difference.

If you sign up for an online course you are getting a teacher who knows how to teach online and the tools to succeed. Students and professors who sign for online day 1 know what they are signing up for.

With this coivid you might get a teacher who doesn't know how to use the technology. Broken links or downloads. A schedule and deadlines that are in flux and not easy to follow or understand. I can say my online courses are not the same as they were in person. I've stories from my peers. Many college students right now are not getting a quality education.


Also I don't think the universities should refund the full amount full all those services. Students did use them some of the semester and this is unprecedented. So a partial refund pro rated seems fair but a refund whole semester seems a little much.

[LongRoad]

About 20 years ago, I attended a graduation at a small, an extremely expensive college. One of the student speakers told of how, when she was very young, her father, a farmer, told her that if she wanted to go to college, she'd have to pay for it. The family simply couldn't afford it. She spoke of how she had to work as part of the financial aid, and all of the things she missed because of it. Further, she said that students SHOULDN'T have to work as part of the financial aid because of the school experiences that they missed, and the connections that couldn't be formed. I rolled my eyes.

Now? I think she had a point. There was a study done about the post-Civil War South. Within a very short period of time (a generation?) the same folks who were rich before the war had regained their financial footing. They had a history of wealth. They knew folks who had been rich. They knew how to be rich. (Hey, we can get folks to work at slave wages and NOT have to buy them!) The connections they had - in today's parlance, their network - brought them back to where they had been.

The folks you meet in college are often the folks that become your initial network. It's not the same on-line. While I think on-line courses, "testing out" etc. have their place in education, I do not think that they should replace the brick and mortar experience.

[bluebooger]

> Yes, find me 5 successful politicians who got their bachelors online though?

I can do better than that

I can show you 5 students who dropped out of in-person classes at Harvard University, University of Chicago, University of Texas, Reed College and yet became billionaires

Mark Zuckerberg
Bill Gates
Lawrence Ellison
Michael Dell
Steve Jobs

see ? in-person classes and connections and the ability to exchange ideas with professors and other students in person is highly overrated

moral of story: if our goal is to get rich and be successful we should all drop out

[Merlin]

I bet there are no millionaires in this forum, I do bet there's a bunch of underemployed people or career workers. Now go check the amount of millionaire's coming out of Stanford.

That isn't a fair comparison. Many of the kids who get into elite colleges come from families of wealth, which gives them a bit of an unfair advantage against families who don't have the same means. That said, I agree that schools like Stanford or Harvard are likely to produce more successful adults, but I don't think the rigor of the education at those schools is the key factor there, but rather the relationships and connections they make along with the name recognition of their school that offers the biggest advantage.

As for millionaires on this forum, I think you may be surprised. For myself, I built and sold 3 companies before I ever earned a single degree. I have been semi-retired (other than consulting) for 5 years. I am sure there are others on the forum who have been financially successful in their life regardless of where their degree came from.

That said, I am sure that you're right that there are more Stanford alumni than Big 3 alumni with a 7+ figure net worth, but those are also two vastly different socioeconomic groups from a demographic perspective.