By: Kelly Malambri / Contributing Writer
It is a well-known fact that convenience comes with a price, but the University’s online course fees take that truth to new extremes.
Without offering any proper justification for such high fees, the University charges students taking online courses $66.33 per credit hour, most commonly resulting in a $199 fee since the majority of classes taken are three credit hours. The high fees for online courses are nothing short of absurd, and must be either eliminated or greatly reduced.
In reference to online course fees, the University has stated on its official website, “If we did not charge extra fees, we would not be able to offer these courses at all. Therefore, to cover the costs of offering these special courses, the tuition for them will carry a premium above regular tuition.”
However, I personally have used the Blackboard system at Valencia College for online courses without paying a dime more than I would have for a class on campus. Other public Florida universities like the University of Central Florida do not charge more, whereas those that do, like Florida State University, only charge $18 extra per credit hour.
These facts only add to the invalidity of the University’s explanation. Charging an average student in a three credit hour course $199 is not necessary to offer online courses, and University students should not stand for it.
After calling Financial Services to ask what the money from online fees was used for and being told they did not have an answer, my call was transferred to Student Services, the Registrar and finally back to Financial Services, who then told me to contact the online department. In an online chat help session, the Online Services department repeated word for word the explanation the official website provides as quoted before.
This simple explanation, which is all the University has to offer, is an insult to students’ intelligence. It is not justifiable in the loosest interpretation of the word.
Increasing the dollar amount of the technology fee students are required to pay at the beginning of each semester could easily lighten this $199 burden. Although some may argue online course fees are not used by all students, neither are student health services or parking, which all students must pay for.
Furthermore, many classes taught on campus use the Blackboard or Moodle system and all of their features, however students pay no more than normal tuition for these classes. Obviously, the online course fees should be more evenly distributed between students, especially those taking courses on campus that are web-enhanced. The solution seems simple.
As noted in earlier Beacon articles, the University relies on money from the government, which is many times awarded based off the usage of classrooms throughout the day. It seems plausible that these charges may have been put in place to appease governmental standards by pushing students away from online classes and keeping students physically in classrooms.
Realistically, these fees are not affordable for students, and the reason for implementing them offered by the University is far from legitimate.
University students deserve to have these fees greatly reduced and pay closer to what the average student does throughout the state of Florida for online courses.
First of all, I’d like to say that I agree with your position about higher fees for online classes being a seemingly unmerited expense.
While I empathize with the issues addressed in this article, I unfortunately feel that it is a burgeoning concern that will continue to plague education, at least until technology-based education becomes more mainstream over the next few years. However, I do feel there are some ambiguous areas that the university could have mentioned when handling your questions. Most online fees may not seem reasonable since students are not “physically” in the classroom environment, thus saving on professors, building and maintenance costs, as well as physical lab fees. However, one thing rarely taken into account is the teacher/professor/proctor hired to monitor, grade, and report all work produced for online courses.
Many “online professors” might have an online “class load” that exceeds 100 students simply because the course can have open or rolling-enrollment throughout a semester to better suit the time constraints and accessibility needs of students. The increase in student-load is a decrease in professor salary that benefits university, which also seems unfair, since there is an increase in credit cost to the student. Consequently, if the university had to hire the same professor to instruct multiple sections with fewer students, to properly educate and address all students’ needs, they would most likely have to increase other areas of tuition. Universities pride themselves on trying to have a smaller student-to-professor ratio, in order to provide inherent value and appeal to those that are paying for an education. This may result in a professor teaching three sections of the same course multiplied by X-amount of dollars that they are paid per section; whereas the same teacher can facilitate the same class load of three sections with one online course. Sure the university is saving money from not having to pay the professor for not having to instruct three separate sections, but where is the incentive for the professor who now has three times the workload, with less pay? Often, online professors are responsible for multiple sections with a set salary not indicative of their courses or student-count totals. This is a grey area not addressed that the university might have wanted to mention.
There is also the possibility that software and server licenses for online course might increase as the amount of online students increase. Granted, programs like Blackboard and Moddle are fantastic resources, but there are other areas of the internet education system that go overlooked, but not undercharged for. I am not as familiar with this aspect; however, I think it warrants mentioning.
Overall, your writing expresses many of the issues that hinder students in today’s technology-driven world. The writing itself is provocative and straightforward in its attempt to remain unbiased. Kudos to discussing a relevant educational topic. I look forward to reading more articles like it in the future.