The education sector in my country was affected negatively due to Corona . Since on-line learning-teaching is of lesser quality than normal face-to-face education, then HONESTY must cause universities to pay back at least 1/3 of the costs of credit hours to the students. It is absolutely unfair if these costs stay the same and universities MUST NOT act as SUPERMARKETS. Do you agree with this statement?
Mr. Edward raised the right topic - and really, what to do with credit hours that were not provided for online learning?
Universities provide several outcomes for students. The first is teaching which, as you say, has been largely online in the past year. The second is credentialing, where the university uses its credibility to unlock a job market for students to whom it confers degrees. The rest is the experiential portion of the university learning dynamic.
The main question here is whether online learning is inferior to F2F learning. My answer is that it doesn't have to be inferior, and it's up to us as college educators to make sure that it isn't. However, in practice, I would say that online learning usually IS inferior, as currently performed by most universities. Again, it's on us to be the best version of ourselves going forward.
On the question of costs, I do not see how a resource-constrained institution is capable of paying back 1/3rd of tuition, regardless of whether that is justified. Going online does not save a typical university money. The buildings are still there, along with all the other fixed assets, many of which were expecting revenue from students who aren't delivering that now, such as dormitories. The faculty still get paid, as do the staff. Usually the number of students per course actually goes down to accommodate the challenges of online education, so in that regard the university's costs may actually rise! Add to that the additional strain on IT resources needed to distribute equipment, maintain it, acquire software and services at a higher rate to support online education, and provide additional training to faculty, and I see university costs either staying put or rising. This is especially true if universities intend to do the highest quality job in going online to any degree.
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