Showing posts with label bait and switch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bait and switch. Show all posts

Monday, September 14, 2020

Did colleges engage in a bait-and-switch scam to maximize revenues during the coronavirus pandemic?

According to a recent article in the Washington Examiner, American universities lured students back to campus this fall by deceptively promising to offer at least some in-person instruction. Then--after the students showed up and paid their tuition and fees--the colleges changed their policies and offered most or all of their classes in an online format.

In the Examiner's view:
[C]ollege administrators pulled a classic con artist's bait and switch. They asked college students to return to campus and bilked parents out of full-freight fees with the promise that at least some instruction would be in-person rather than online. Shortly before school opened, with the money safely in the bank, they shifted exclusively or at least nearly exclusively to online instruction, but asked student to come back to campus anyway.
Is this a fair indictment? I think it is.  Schools all over the United States shifted to online teaching for the fall semester, which almost everyone agrees is inferior to face-to-face instruction. Nevertheless, the schools did not discount their tuition, and they did not close their dormitories.

How can a college tell students that in-person classes are dangerous while continuing to stuff the kids into residence halls and frat houses, where the risk of contracting the coronavirus is unreasonably high?

In my view, American colleges responded to the COVID-19 crisis to maximize revenue at the expense of their students' health. It was nuts for universities to pack young adults into dorms at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is still not under control.

But the colleges were forced to adopt this reckless policy because they need the cash flow.  Many universities financed their dorm-building sprees by floating bonds or entering into partnerships with private corporations that funded the construction projects in return for getting a percentage of the room-and-board fees. These schools have got to keep their dorms full to meet their financial obligations.

Unfortunately for American higher education, the coronavirus disrupted its business model.  Parents are not going to pay fifty grand a year for their children to take online classes, and they are not going to pay room-and-board fees so their kids can live in crowded dormitories where they face an elevated risk of contracting COVID-19.

This cash-before-kids policy is not going to work for a lot of colleges. Many will close in the coming year.  And the upcoming shut-down of American schools is not just due to the coronavirus pandemic. A lot of families have figured out that that the universities are charging way too much for mediocre academic programs that don't lead to good jobs.

As James Howard Kunstler put it in a recent blog essay:
[T]he colleges and universities are [not] going down hard . . . just because Covid-19 has interrupted their business plan. Rather, because of the stupendous and gross dishonesty that higher ed has fallen into. The racketeering around college loans was bad enough but the intellectual racketeering around fake fields of study, thought-crime persecutions, and an epic sexual hysteria has disgraced the very mission of higher ed, turned it into something no better than a sick cult . . . .
I could not have said it better myself. Americans are awaking to the fact that much of our nation's higher education system is a big scam, and they are increasingly unwilling to subject their children to an education system that looks more and more like the Spanish Inquisition.

The penalty for saying "All Lives Matter" on a university campus








Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Bait and Switch: In response to the coronavirsus pandemic, colleges shifted to online instruction. Students aren't happy

According to Investopedia, "Bait and switch is a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about quality or low prices . . ." However, once customers are lured in,  "the advertised deal does not exist, or is of far inferior quality or specifications, where the buyer is then presented with an upsell."

When the universities shut down last month in response to the coronavirus pandemic, they sent their students home and partially refunded dorm fees they had collected from students living on campus. They also shifted all face-to-face teaching to online instruction while continuing to charge full tuition.

In essence, the universities engaged in bait and switch. They promised a classroom learning experience, but they substituted an inferior product--cobbled together online classes.

 But many students weren't happy with the change. In their view, online teaching is an inferior product.

Inside Higher Ed told the story of Arica Kincheloe, who took out $50,000 in student loans to enroll in a one-year accelerated program in social service administration at the University of Chicago.
Like most higher education institutions, the University of Chicago canceled on-campus classes and directed faculty to shift to a distance-learning format.

But Kincheloe believes she has been shortchanged. "It's a throwaway--a shortened quarter," she said. "I do not feel like I am getting the same education that I would have otherwise."

Other University of Chicago students agree with Kincheloe.  Fifteen hundred students signed a petition calling for a 50 percent reduction in tuition, and 850 students formed a group that is threatening to withhold their tuition payments.

UChicago administrators don't see a problem with the change. Administrators say students will get full credit toward their degrees even though the instruction has been modified. Therefore, the university will continue charging students full tuition.

The University of Chicago probably considers this controversy a temporary annoyance. All this may blow over if the university returns to traditional on-campus teaching this fall.

But I doubt it.

Private colleges have justified extortionary tuition by arguing that a student's on-campus experience--both curricular and extracurricular--is superior.  Those ivy-covered buildings, those cerebral tweed-coated professors, networking opportunities to mingle with rich people--the elite universities claim the whole package justifies charging tuition as high as $60,000 a year.

But if students are sitting at home taking classes that are little more than correspondence courses, then they might as well go to a less expensive state university.

Likewise, HBCUs are going to have difficulty justifying their existence if their instruction moves to a distance-learning format. As Pearl K. Dowe argued in a recent essay, the survivability of HBCUs "has always been rooted in their commitment to serve, educate and advance Black students in a [physical]space that is edifying, nurturing and empowering." So why would Black students enroll at an HBCU if they're taking their classes online?


I'm not saying the universities intentionally engaged in bait and switch. The pandemic forced them to suspend traditional classroom teaching. But they know that their hastily put-together online classes are a cheap substitute for face-to-face interaction with professors. In fact, many universities have gone to pass/fail grading for online instruction--an implicit admission that this mode of teaching is inferior.

I agree with the University of Chicago students.  The online instruction they are getting is not what they bargained for and is a shoddy substitute. The University of Chicago should slash tuition for the spring semester by 50 percent.

Online instruction is a shoddy substitute for classroom teaching.