I think it would be nice if colleges had a tuition freeze for a few years. But with losses mounting don’t see that happening either.
All I’m saying is that Harvard should be the one adjusting. In any other situation, for example when you order something online, you should get what you pay for, and if you don’t then you get a refund. I don’t see how paying for college is any different. A partial refund.
The problem with radical restructuring, especially in higher ed, is that it rarely makes things better.
“Too many people in college” - I assume that you meant that there are people whose career choices do not require a college degree, so they shouldn’t be wasting their time and money on a college degree.
The big problem with this is that it plays into a class system, in which the “elite” go to college, and get all of the high paying “thinking” jobs, while the “lower classes” go to trade school and learn the lower paying manual jobs. This will compound over generations, as the people in lower paying jobs are unable to afford the education support that is available to high paid families, etc.
“Too many ridiculous majors” - there is a massive amount of literature on the benefits of an education which is rich in the humanities. Moreover, for far too many people “ridiculous” = “I don’t understand it”, or “it’s against my religion/ideology”. If you want to take an exaggerated example, I am sure that most flat-earthers think that astronomy is a ridiculous major. Even less exaggerated is that many fundamentalists (of multiple religions) think that paleontology and evolutionary biology are ridiculous majors.
College is about expanding your mind, and eliminating majors which you, or any other person, deems “ridiculous”, has the exact opposite effect. Once you only have majors which some specific group thinks are OK, you do not have a university, you have an institute of indoctrination.
That is why I rarely refer to any major as “ridiculous”, even when it seems to me to be so, at first glance. As an academic, I am aware of my own limitations at determining which majors are important or needed, and which are irrelevant or superfluous.
“Too much superfluous administrative fluff.” Yes and no. There are indeed too many high paid administrators. However, there are far too few mid and lower level administrators. Moreover, many administrators are there because of demands by parents and students. Look through the titles and what these people do, and you will see how many of them were created to make sure that the services which parents demand are provided.
The problems of universities is that they are either run by academics, who are not usually good at administration, or by professional administrators, who are unfamiliar with how institutes of higher education work best. Academics know what needs to be done, but are usually incapable of actually achieving this, while professional administrators don’t know what needs to be done, but are all too often very effective at getting the wrong things done.
Well, in all honesty, sometimes it’s difficult to get a good answer from an academic on what needs to be done, since academics are taught to question everything, especially their own ideas. This is great in education and research, less so when trying to develop policies and mission statements. Unfortunately, academics who are absolutely certain in their ideas are even worse…
If I was in a restaurant and ordered a filet mignon and the place burned down before I got it, but they scrambled and were able to get me a ribeye, I’d certainly expect to be charged for a ribeye and not the filet I originally ordered.
I think the better restaurant analogy is if you went to a buffet and the restaurant ran out of X for 15 minutes of the hour that you were there and replaced it with Y. If X was lobster and Y was frozen fish sticks, it’s pretty reasonable that you would expect the restaurant to knock off a few bucks (or give you a coupon for the next visit). If however Y was crab legs and the buffet also had filet, seabass, etc… that did not run out, the expectation of a refund, if any, would be much different. Going back to the article I linked upthread, a major chunk of what you pay for in a Harvard tuition is the certification value (i.e. the diploma that says Harvard). Also, let us not fool ourselves, the people driving all of this litigation is the plaintiffs bar, who definitely are not going to let this crisis go to waste.
What’s a good lawsuit between friends? You all are making me hungry and I didn’t bring anything for lunch…LOL…
So I asked my just graduated daughter about this to get her perspective. She did not have a great last semester and told me it sucked and they didn’t teach anywhere close to the expectations for the school. She thinks the lawsuits are ill advised. She get’s it since she went through it. But like no one really plans for a pandemic, right?
Her evaluation is if the online classes continued and the instruction was “still” bad in the fall then yes , she would expect something in return. Her advise? If you don’t think it will be improved then take a gap semester or year.
Guess we’re back to the whole “if you don’t like it then leave” thing huh.
Harvard is in a position to say just that. Replacing the unhappy people is much easier than dealing with them.
Sure, Harvard could. That would tarnish Harvard’s reputation and hurt them, so I doubt they will. Plus, I’m pretty sure expelling students for protesting is illegal.
Exactly how did you get from Harvard telling students that if they didn’t like how Harvard runs its education that they (the students) could leave, to Harvard expelling the students?
A Harvard education is not a la carte. You don’t get to pick the services you will pay for and take a pass on the ones you don’t use. Even though professors were online, they still had office hours, they still had advising, they still had access to the library. If the student needed something, a librarian could get that material to them. They received full credit for the courses they took. If they wanted ‘more’ they should have demanded it. In fact if they are so smart and special, they should have been able to figure it out for themselves. Need a small group discussion? Set up a Zoom. Isn’t Harvard supposed to teach them to problem solve?
I’m sure there are students at Harvard who don’t take advantage of office hours or study groups or the library when they are on campus. Should Harvard refund part of their tuition every semester? There are students who don’t take advantage of guest lecturers or lab opportunities and think it is a waste of tuition money for the college to support those events. Too bad. It’s like taxes; you don’t get to say that you aren’t in favor of supporting a war or food stamps or farm subsidies. Those are part of the package and you don’t get to direct your tax dollars.
If the Harvard students don’t think they got a Harvard education, they should not take credit for the semester and ask for all their money back. They could either then retake the classes or not graduate from Harvard. Or they could have an * on their transcript and diploma saying that although they received Harvard educations, they were quite as good as a REAL Harvard education. When you order an item from Amazon and return it, you do get your money back but you don’t get to keep the item and you certainly don’t get to keep half the item and get half your money back. You can’t have it both ways. They either earned (and paid for) a Harvard semester or they didn’t.
I was replying to GKUnion, who said “Replacing the unhappy people is much easier than dealing with them.” I assumed that replacing = expelling and accepting different students. @GKUnion , if I was wrong, please let me know. This idea was introduced by Knowsstuff, who said “I am really hoping the students that are this unhappy with Harvard would transfer out to a school that handled this crisis better. What do you think the chance of that is?” It’s in the post.
(edited to tag GKUnion)
And now we’ve circled back to the topic of “if a restaurant burns down…”
As Schadret said, “If I was in a restaurant and ordered a filet mignon and the place burned down before I got it, but they scrambled and were able to get me a ribeye, I’d certainly expect to be charged for a ribeye and not the filet I originally ordered.”
Using your Amazon example, if I order the full Harry Potter Series on Amazon and I only get books 1-4, with no possibility of receiving books 5-7, I expect that Amazon will give me a partial refund. I would be rightfully upset at being expected to pay full price when I did not get the full product. I shouldn’t have to “problem solve” and go to garage sales or thrift stores to try and find the other three books.
@nomood I never meant to imply Harvard should be expelling unhappy students.
My apologies, then. Can I ask what you did mean by “Replacing the unhappy people is much easier than dealing with them”?
@nommod Unhappy people usually remove themselves. Once removed they will be replaced. It happens at every college and university each year.
Thanks for the clarification!
It is more like you ordered the 7 book set and received 1-5, and the last 2 books came in an audio version. Same information, same content, just in a different format. You don’t have to keep the set (and take credit for having read/heard/learned the info), but you can’t tell Amazon “I only want to pay for volumes 1-5 but I want credit for the whole series. I want a certificate that I read/listened to the WHOLE SERIES, as if I completed the series.”
Either it was a Harvard education or it was a substandard education, and I think if it was substandard, future grad schools and employers should know that. Perhaps a little * next to the discounted classes saying they were substandard? Should the students who finished the syllabus for Calc or Bio pay the full price because they got exactly what they were promised? If the Zoom course was exactly what was promised (the full 7 volumes of HP) should that student pay the full price even if the last 2 volumes were paperback and not hardback? Same info, different format.
If Harvard has online classes this fall and determines the price of those courses is exactly what was charged in the spring, and the student chooses to sign up and take those classes knowing they would be online, what then? You think the classes are substandard but you want the Harvard diploma. What do you do?
Harvard (and every other school) is arguing that the tuition was charged for 4 classes and the student took 4 classes and got credit for taking those 4 classes.
I don’t care if the last two are in audiobook format. What if I was deaf or hard of hearing? I ordered the 7 book set, so I expect to get the 7 book set. Not 5 books and then 2 audiobooks. If I don’t get the 7 book set, then I would like a partial refund.
And as I said before, I don’t case whether you’re paying 50000 for the Harvard name. If you agree to exchange 50000 dollars for a list of services, you should get those services. If you don’t, you deserve a partial refund.
And yes, it is up to the student. If they decide to exchange 50000 dollars for a list of services in the fall (services which include classes being online only), then they agreed to it. However, these students right now agreed to exchange 50000 (or however much their tuition was) for a list of services that included classes being actual classes. They did not agree to pay 50000 (or however much their tuition was) for online classes.
And this is not a case of Harvard not being able to afford to give students a partial refund (even 1000 would be a miracle, considering it’s probably not going to happen). This isn’t a case of how the students need to take pity on Harvard because they need the money to buy essentials like they’re a struggling family restaurant. This is a case of a business, Harvard, wanting to keep their profit margin high.