Students are seeking partial refunds on tuition and campus fees because they claim they are not receiving the proper quality of education as promised after their schools opted to switch to online after the government ordered the shutdown of schools and other industries amid coronavirus pandemic.
The Daily Mail reports that lawsuits say "the quality of instruction is far below the classroom experience" after the closure last month. Prestigious private and public universities like Columbia and Cornell, Brown, Michigan State, Purdue, and the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Students seek refund amounting to thousands of dollars for tuition and other fees for accesses to gyms, libraries, labs, and other facilities that are now all closed.
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While online education proponents say it can be just as effective, universities say they have done everything they can to create rigorous online classes in a matter of weeks.
However, complaints maintain that the college experience is more than just course credits as personal interaction between students and faculty add value to traditional learning. Meanwhile, colleges usually charge less for online classes.
Grainger Rickenbaker, 20, a freshman in the Drexel University in Philadelphia who filed a class-action lawsuit, said his online classes "are poor substitutes for classroom learning." There is little interaction in classes, which mostly used recorded videos.
Drexel, which costs $2,405, closed mid-March, but the semester continues online until June 13.
'You just feel a little bit diminished. It's just not the same experience I would be getting if I was at the campus,' said South Carolina-based Rickenbaker.
Questioning the educational quality
'The value of any degree issued based on online or pass/fail classes will be diminished for the rest of the students' lives,' they state in the lawsuit citing "breach of contract' and 'unjust enrichment."
Rickenberger files the case on behalf of the 13,490 Drexel undergrads while Dixon is doing the same for the 11,117 students at Miami, which tuitions cost$51,930 and $54,516, respectively.
Similarly, the University of California, Berkeley, faces the same case as some professors are simply uploading assignments without clearly providing instructions while Vanderbilt University focuses on the 'quality and academic rigor of courses has significantly decreased.'
For Purdue University, the complaint said that no online course could trigger the applicable, particularly when only $750 has been credited instead of the whole $10030.
Online university courses cost around $15,000, while the actual class is approximately $50,000.
'These students decided to go to in-person, on-campus universities. They could have chosen to go to online colleges and earn their degree that way, but they didn't.'
Meanwhile, prior to the case, demands for tuition refunds had been spreading. Students have started petitions calling for refunds as online classes left them underwhelmed.
Similarly, Michigan State University faces a lawsuit as it college charges about $5,250 per semester in room and board fees, but the school only offered students a room and board credit worth $1,120. It costs about $14,524 per semester.
These references and online courses increase the probability to lead students to drop out of school.
