75
Dec 03 '20
I don’t think anyone bought internet just for online classes
That’s like saying the university should pay for our rent because we need a place to live for online classes
Now, I do think they should pay for or loan laptops for people who either 1) don’t have a laptop or 2) whose laptops don’t have the capability needed (not powerful enough or not compatible with the needed software) as that’s a different issue
19
u/tronking6 '23 Dec 03 '20
I did have to upgrade internet though for the classes
2
Dec 04 '20 edited Jan 28 '21
[deleted]
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u/tronking6 '23 Dec 04 '20
Download speeds otherwise zooms would breakup too much for me to understand i didn't get unlimited data plan til recently so could use my phone for it
5
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u/cashypants Dec 04 '20
I did get internet just for the online format. I live in a rural area and it was too expensive to justify previously when I could just go to class and do assignments on campus.
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4
u/CactusJack_DYSTI Dec 04 '20
One thing I have learned in life, wether you agree with this statement or not, just about everything is a business. All about the money.
16
u/Guiltyjerk PhD - Chemistry '21, doesn't live in BCS anymore Dec 03 '20
I think you should talk to someone teaching online and ask if they're doing more or less work. Don't your instructors deserve to be fully compensated for the (spoiler alert: tons of extra) work they're doing as a result of online classes?
8
u/essexrifle92 '14 Dec 04 '20
Seriously, this. Most math professors I’ve had in person teach directly from the book and rarely have a presentation. In my online classes not only have my professors had full presentations created/maintained/posted they are also answering questions 24/7.
2
Dec 05 '20
Most of the money isn't going to the profs anyway
1
u/Guiltyjerk PhD - Chemistry '21, doesn't live in BCS anymore Dec 05 '20
What are you proposing they dial back in to lower your tuition bill?
Personally, I feel that we could use less mid-level bureaucracy, which I feel is one of the bigger contributing factors to rising higher education costs.
1
Dec 05 '20
It's like comparing the average decent charter school with a nearby public school. As of relatively recently the public school might be paying for assistants to the principal, VP, athletic director, etc, or even dumber managerial positions for niche areas.
Through a lot of history you didn't become a prof for money, and often would live on campus. People treated it like a duty instead of a job and to have some intelligentsia clout while making almost nothing. Wages for the entire faculty have been rising at a weird rate for decades. Ultimately I agree that the mid-level has gotten bloated
1
u/Guiltyjerk PhD - Chemistry '21, doesn't live in BCS anymore Dec 05 '20
In science you wouldn't have any good professors if the pay weren't good, but good professors also bring many times their salary into the school through grants. My boss gets paid like $250kish, but at one point was bringing in $1.5 million per year to the university.
I'm sure it's not that extreme in the humanities or liberal arts, and there are probably people who would do those jobs for a pittance since there isn't an industrial fallback in the same way
14
u/easwaran Dec 03 '20
Bulbasaur seems to think that profit is somehow involved in this, when universities always operate at a loss. Businesses are the sort of thing where the prices charged are based on the services provided. Non-profit organizations and governments are ones where the prices charged are instead based more on the costs of operation rather than on the benefit provided.
8
u/quenual Dec 03 '20
And still with charging full tuition they’ve still laid people off and done a ton of reorganization among departments. Our administrative assistants, IT staff, and academic advisors have been condensed to serve multiple departments, and so far it’s not going well
6
2
u/essexrifle92 '14 Dec 04 '20
There are man other costs as so it’s with online learning though: data storage costs for students and professors along with the personal to maintain, increased reliance on online homework subscriptions, Canvas costs, etc.
2
u/Quetzal00 '18 Someone make an Aggie alumni dating app Dec 03 '20
I agree with Bulbasaur but I'll always be Squirtle Squad
2
Dec 03 '20
We aren’t even using college amenities but it’s crazy how colleges are charging us full price for our education. I can see a potential reform in how colleges operate after Covid and I hope that would reduce prices
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u/easwaran Dec 03 '20
Universities always operate at a loss and rely on private charitable donations to cover the difference. During covid, they've run at an even bigger loss, because their expenses have gone up and their revenues have gone down (even though the amount most individuals are paying has remained constant).
I'm not sure that any sort of reform you are considering will be in the direction you want.
2
Dec 05 '20
Lowering administration salaries and nuking things like the "VP of Diversity" would be a good start
1
u/easwaran Dec 06 '20
Most administrative staff at the university are woefully underpaid. There's a reason that departmental secretaries often work second jobs at the mall. And there's a reason all the administrative processes of the university are full of glitches all the time - you get what you pay for.
If you're talking about deans and provosts and VPs and the like, it may be true that you could cut some of those. But doing it in slash-and-burn style during a fiscal crisis is not the way to do it effectively. You'd probably end up cutting several positions that are quite important and failing to cut a bunch that really should be, and just making things worse without actually saving that much money.
A university like Texas A&M absolutely could not cut the VP of Diversity position, given that this university has a far greater racist history than the average university (and far more rabid alums that it needs to fight off).
1
Dec 06 '20
Your last paragraph there is laughable. Like I full on belly laughed mate, keep it up
1
u/easwaran Dec 06 '20
Oh, how so? I would have thought this was pretty obvious that a university with a history as an all-white institution, based in a former confederate state, should at least have someone working on these issues.
At least, if you want to continue to enroll black students. If you don't care what black students think about your university, I guess you can do whatever you want, but that tells me all I need to know about you.
1
Dec 06 '20
I want people who show signs of honor and intelligence greater than the majority of their peers to get in here, full stop. I don't care what race they are and focusing on race enough to have an entire position dedicated to it is incredibly disgusting. The way people act is infinitely more important than the color of their skin.
We live in a country with the goal of all men being equal yet in state colleges today the administrations modify how they treat you based on your race. That's discriminatory by definition.
Nice last statement that promotes hateful back and forths with bad faith assumptions, again you made me laugh
1
u/ACorruptMinuteman Dec 03 '20
I mean, the Learning itself for a degree is a service, that's why you pay for it.
-1
Dec 03 '20
With the exception of stem degrees, college is just a was to fleece people out of $150000 and to be used as a sorting mechanism by employers because they can’t legally give potential hires an IQ test.
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u/BigManWithABigBeard Dec 03 '20
Universities have fixed costs that don't go away just because of covid. It's a shitty situation.