BY Aaron Kunkler
Staff Reporter
Recently, the university’s Budget and Finance Committee approved a measure which would implement a tiered fee system for courses with an online presence beginning next fall. However, a decision last Wednesday from the President’s office has put the initiative on an indefinite hold.
As it stands, students who are enrolled in online or hybrid courses pay a $40 fee, in addition to tuition, to cover various costs associated with online instruction. Many more courses and instructors utilize tools such as Blackboard or Canvas to direct their classes, or to simply post grades, and enrolled students are not currently charged for their use. That may change if a proposed reform is approved by the Board of Trustees.
Christopher Schedler, associate professor and a part of the Academic Technology Advisory Council, believes that the change will benefit the campus.
“Currently, students in online courses subsidize use of online services for all students,” Schedler said.
About 65 percent of Central’s professors and 40 percent of the courses, use online services, according to Schedler. However, because most students take at least three courses, the chances of students being affected by this price increase is extremely high. One source said this could affect up to 90 percent of the student body at Central.
The proposal would levy a tiered fee system on three levels. Fully online courses would see no change from the $40 fee already in place, but hybrid classes would drop to $20, and any class with a web presence would garner a fee of $5. This means that even if a professor only uses Canvas or Blackboard to post grades, the students would be charged $5 per course.
Schedler says he sees this as an opportunity to create a better system.
“It’s definitely a more equitable and fair system,” Schedler said. “It will also allow us to provide more kinds of technology devoted to face-to-face teaching.”
Last month, the Board of Trustees voted to not increase tuition next year. According to a ASCWU-BOD press release on the Central website, certain areas of funding may be cut to make up for the lack of funds.
According to the press release, the ASCWU-BOD said it recognizes the difficult situation the Board of Trustees and the administration are facing with regards to the university’s financial situation. They believe that it is unfortunate that the university is being forced to choose between cutting services or raising student costs.
While the approval of the ASCWU-BOD is not required to pass most fees, it greatly increases the chances that the Board of Trustees will approve a fee increase.
The ASCWU-BOD was not initially contacted by the Academic Technology Advisory Council. Instead, the proposed fee increase was brought to their attention near the end of the process via a third party.
The options for the ASCWU-BOD were to either endorse the proposal in exchange for a reduction from $10 per course to $5, or to wait for the Board of Trustees to make a decision in July.
“We support this fee, but we would like to see the programs that this supports be paid out of our tuition dollars,” Jacob Wittman, ASCWU-BOD executive vice president, said.
Wittman said the ASCWU-BOD is concerned with keeping costs on students lower but also acknowledged that the current financial situation may warrant the fee.
“In the future, if tuition increases, I would like to see less course fees like the multi-modal,” Wittman said.
The money raised was designated to go towards funding Blackboard and Canvas, as well as other resources and licenses such as plagiarism detection programs, online tutoring, library services and faculty use.
The funding could also potentially fund future programs such as creating recorded lectures for students to play back at will, or eventually providing a student-accessible recording studio, according to Schedler.
Bryan Elliott, BOD president, said he also believes the funding should come from core funds, but acknowledges that the college is currently in a difficult place financially.
“We were able to come to a compromise that I think is fair to everyone,” Elliott said.
Not everyone is on board with the proposed fee systems, as illustrated by President Gaudino’s unwillingness to further the process. According to Schedler, the proposed fee restructuring is currently “dead for now.”
Tim Englund, chair of the mathematics department, did not support the increased fee proposal.
“As a department chair, I am against the Canvas fee,” Englund said. “If I were a student I would absolutely shop for the classes that didn’t use Canvas.”
Englund believes if a fee like the tiered multi-modal course fees were implemented, it would create a situation where students would be paying more for the same education.
Natalie Parks, junior and vocal performance major, believes the proposed fees may have been too much.
“I know it’s a small fee,” Parks said. “But it’s more money that I have to pay when it’s already a struggle to go to college.”
While the multi-modal course fee may be stalled for now, students can likely expect to see further financial proposals in the future as the administration attempts to deal with the university’s fiscal issues.
