By: Summer Smith
Lili Adam led nearly 1,000 Dominican students in a petition drive last July for lower tuition on account of the university’s move toward more online classes in response of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Dominican enters its ninth week of classes Adam is still not satisfied, but content with the tuition rate not increasing for the upcoming year. Her petition ended up getting the attention of the Dean of Students, leading only to a recommendation to file for the CARES Act.
Adam acknowledges the changes saying “(the fall semester) is more organized for sure but it’s difficult,” she said. “I’m a theater major so having to do theater classes online is challenging in general. I do think it’s more organized, but I still don’t think it’s something we should be paying full tuition for.”
Another student who signed the petition, graphic design major Erin Torphy, is also not satisfied with the online/hybrid regime. Online learning has been “extremely stressful,” she said
“Most professors are not handling the issues with technology in the best way,” she said.
Most of Torphy’s classes do not include Zoom meetings; instead, the professors post assignments on the Canvas digital portal, which Torphy finds frustrating. Adrian Cebula, a sociology major, shares the major annoyances on the only-Canvas-learning with Torphy.
“There’s a lack of verbal communication. Everything is through emails or discussion boards, and I just feel as though I am not gaining anything from being online,” she said. Cebula added that he feels as though he is teaching himself and that online learning is not beneficial for his learning style.
Dominican is not the only school dealing with dissatisfied students. In an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, from March to July there were over 100 lawsuits filed by students demanding a refund on their tuition. These lawsuits argued that online learning is jeopardizing students’ education because the quality of online schooling is lower than in-person.
It’s not just the lack of education students are upset about, it’s the lack of the college experience that they are losing because of the pandemic. A student from Northwestern University put it this way in a Wall Street Journal .
“Would you pay $75,000 for front-row seats to a Beyoncé concert and be satisfied with a livestream instead? It doesn’t make sense for universities to charge full price while delivering a fundamentally different product than their customers paid for,” the student said.
ssmith@my.dom.edu
1 Trackback / Pingback
Comments are closed.