Chong v. Northeastern University: No tuition refund to students whose classes were switched to remote learning due to COVID-19

American universities were dealt a severe blow last spring when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Almost all of them were forced to switch from face-to-face instruction to an online format in midsemester. 

Students at several universities filed lawsuits demanding a refund of tuition and fees. They argued that the quality of online teaching was inferior to classroom instruction, and they wanted their money back.

A few days ago, Judge D. J. Stearns, a federal district judge in Massachusetts, issued a decision in one of these cases: Chong v. Northeastern University. Plaintiffs had filed a class-action lawsuit against Northeastern to get a refund of tuition and fees, but Judge Stearns sided with Northeastern University.  In his view, Northeastern had not breached its contract with students by shifting to an online teaching format, although he allowed the plaintiffs to proceed with their claim for a refund of the campus recreation fee.

I think Judge Stearns made the right decision, and I predict other judges will rule in favor of universities when they decide similar cases.  After all, it is not the universities' fault that the nation was virtually shut down by COVID-19 last spring. The colleges pursued their only reasonable option--which was to convert all instruction to a distance-learning format.

I am sure that complaining students are often right when they say that online instruction is inferior to face-to-face teaching. Nevertheless, new technologies like Zoom have improved the quality of video-conferencing.  I have taught via Zoom over the past several months, and I don't think my students' learning experience was hurt because I was not in the same room with them.

As I said, I think American colleges will win students' lawsuits demanding tuition refunds because their instruction was shifted to an online format. But that does not mean the colleges will skate through the coronavirus crisis unscathed.

Thane Gallo, one of the named plaintiffs in the suit against Northeastern, paid a tuition bill of $26,210 for the 2020 spring semester. Manny Chong, a graduate student in  Northeastern's counseling psychology program, was charged $23,400 to enroll in spring classes. That's a lot of money to take online courses.

All across America, universities will find that the coronavirus awoke students and their parents to the fact that the cost of attending an American college is too damned high. Undergraduate tuition at Northeastern is $52,000 a year, and students must pay additional money for room and board, textbooks, and assorted fees. 

That simply is not reasonable--especially when students are taking classes from their home computers.  In the months to come, colleges and universities may discover another symptom of COVID-19 not yet officially identified: sticker shock.

Snap out of it!

Planning on going to college this fall? Why not wait a year or two?

Since time immemorial, middle-class parents have urged their children to get a college education. A college degree, parents believed, was the indispensable ticket to a good life.  College was where young people prepared for the world of work, where they often met their future spouses, and where they formed lifelong ties to classmates.

But listen carefully. Times have changed. The coronavirus, campus unrest, and a troubled economy have undermined the value of a college degree. If you are thinking about enrolling for college this fall, you might want to postpone that plan--at least for a year. And here is why:

The coronavirus pandemic. First of all, the COVID-19 epidemic forced virtually every American college to close last spring and to shift from live instruction to a distance-learning format.  Most schools have announced that they will be teaching their courses online this fall. 

Moreover, dorm life, college sports, and extracurricular activities will all be negatively impacted by the coronavirus.  In short, going to college next year may not be much fun.

Colleges and universities will learn to adapt to a post-pandemic world, but it will probably take a couple of years before they figure it out. Why not postpone college for a year or two while this transition is ongoing?

Less police protection.  Colleges have a legal duty to keep their students safe on campus and in the dorms. Most colleges meet this responsibility by maintaining a campus police force.

In the wake of George Floyd's killing, however, many colleges and universities are facing intense pressure to dismantle their police forces. As Insider Higher Ed recently reported:

 Student organizations, workers’ unions and individual activists at dozens of universities are calling on administrations to cut ties with local police or disband campus police departments, saying that policing institutions enact violence upon black people and uphold white supremacy.

So if you go to college this fall, there is a good chance that police protection on your campus will be diminished from what it was a year ago or even eliminated.  In my view, this is another reason to postpone going to college. Wait until the debate about campus law enforcement is resolved before embarking on your college career.

Growing uncertainty about the worth of a college degree. Although the higher-education industry tirelessly touts the value of college education, that mantra is becoming shopworn.

Without question, the cost of going to college is far too high.  In particular, students who take out student loans to major in "soft" disciplines (social sciences, humanities, gender studies, etc.) are finding that their degrees leave them with massive debt and no job.

Some young people go to college with a clear idea about how their degree will qualify them for vocations in such fields as engineering, business, computer sciences,  or medical technology. But others are clueless about why they are on campus.

If you have only a hazy notion about how you want to make a living, you should strongly consider working for a year after graduating from high school. You should use the time to reflect on your future and explore alternatives to chasing a college degree.

In my state, thousands of people have gotten technical training at vocational and community colleges and gone on to get good jobs with six-figure salaries.  If you ask these people whether they are sorry they didn't acquire a bachelor's degree, I think most will tell you no.

So think long and hard before going to college this fall, especially if you plan to finance your studies with student loans. Your chosen university will still be around in 2021 if you decide to pursue a college education. 

Second (and kinder) thoughts about distance learning at the universities during the coronavirus pandemic

Not long ago, I commented on the mass shift to distance learning at American universities, which were forced to close their campuses last March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Disappointed students sued more than 50 colleges about the transition, arguing that the quality of their education had deteriorated when face-to-face instruction was suspended. I commented that the students were surely right and that distance learning is indeed inferior to traditional modes of teaching.

Since I wrote that commentary, however, I taught a course as an adjunct at my former university, and I was pleasantly surprised by the experience.  I delivered this course using two distance-learning tools: Moodle and Zoom.

With Moodle, I was able to post all my reading materials and communicate with my students about their assignments. Using Zoom, I met with a small group of students in "real-time," and we were able to discuss court cases very much as if we were all in the same room. 

This positive experience with distance learning caused me to revise my views. I now believe that most colleges can maintain the overall quality of their instruction, even if they are forced to rely heavily on distance learning in the upcoming fall semester. But I still believe something will be lost if universities rely too heavily on technology.

 Zoom, I learned, is an excellent way to meet with small groups of students who are in different places. I think seminars and small-class settings taught through Zoom or a similar product can continue with little loss in quality.

And it seems to me that large lecture classes will not be adversely affected if professors give their lectures by video.  After all, one of my first classes as an undergraduate more than 40 years ago had 700 students enrolled. I was given an assigned seat at the back of the auditorium and could hardly identify the gender of my professor.  Delivering video lectures may actually be an improvement over having instructors drone on to hundreds of students in a cavernous auditorium.

I am still skeptical of so-called asynchronous teaching, where the professor presents students with canned instructional units without ever having any personal interaction with them. In my view, this kind of education amounts to little more than a correspondence course.

I am also skeptical about distance-taught instruction that assesses student performance through pass-fail grading.  It has been my observation that all rigor goes out the window when a professor is grading students on a pass-fail basis. It is almost impossible to fail anyone when the assessment standards are so relaxed, and it is absolutely impossible to reward students who excel in their classes.

And I continue to be opposed to academic programs that are delivered entirely online. After all, who believes that an undergraduate degree, a master's degree. or a doctoral degree that is offered entirely online is in any way comparable to an academic degree taught traditionally on an actual college campus?

I wish all the colleges well as they adjust their academic programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  I think most of them can deliver instruction this fall through various distance-learning formats without too much loss in quality.

Nevertheless, most students choose their colleges based on their perception of what their campus experience will be like. They don't just sit in classes, after all. They live in residence halls, interact with other students, and immerse themselves in all kinds of extracurricular activities. Some percentage of students will not go to college this fall if they can't have a traditional college experience.

Most commentators predict a significant enrollment decline if academic life doesn't get back to normal (or at least close to normal) by the fall semester. I think they are right. And the colleges that will suffer the most are the small liberal arts colleges and the regional public institutions.

This guy should be teaching online.