… she has to admit that the class lawsuits now emerging from parents who understand what everyone with half a brain understands – online classes are distinctly inferior to in-person – have merit.
Of course, if you’ve been reading her Click-Thru U category for the last decade or so, you know that UD has been railing against the lazy cynical trend toward onlining more and more college (and high school) classes. It’s cheap, so universities tend to like it; you can cheat, so students tend to like it (once football schools got hold of the whole online course model, they went nuts); and you can do it from your Mexican palapa or even parcel most of the labor out to various faceless nameless drudges, so professors tend to like it…
But when many of the people (students; some teachers) involved in an expensive university course are basically phoning it in… or when (however hard participants are trying) the highly prized physical presence and social interaction of enthusiastic, charismatic experts is absolutely gone, parents tend to notice.
Everyone knows the peculiar pressurized circumstances of current nationwide online education; even granting that, however, one can ask whether a discount should apply.
May 5th, 2020 at 9:29AM
An urban legend becomes real:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/present-tense/
May 5th, 2020 at 11:06AM
Ravi: Love it. The image of that room is delicious…
May 5th, 2020 at 12:32PM
I think the colleges and universities should offer complete refunds for the spring semesters, but wipe those semesters from the student’s record. After all, if the teaching and learning is sub-par, the students shouldn’t get credit for it, either.
I wonder how many of those parents and students would take that offer up?
May 5th, 2020 at 7:44PM
Students, faculty, and administrators need to take the Steve Martin pledge:
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/steve-martin-cold-opening/n10162
May 7th, 2020 at 2:57PM
Ravi: LOL.
May 12th, 2020 at 5:46PM
Quite ironic that unis are being sued for using lesser quality on line classes, while unis touted high quality on campus wifi accessibility as a marketing tool to lure students. As this here blog has chronicled, in class lectures have been degraded because students can’t get off their damn devices. It would seem students who claim online education is inferior should also demand an end to in class internet accessibility because of its disruption of the learning experience. Just sayin…,
May 13th, 2020 at 8:46AM
charlie: With very few exceptions for some special classes, absolutely correct.