If college is online-only in fall, will students sign up?

Across the country, college students are filing lawsuits and launching petitions alleging their virtual classes were inferior to in-person courses, and they deserve reimbursement for the COVID-19 quarter. A proposed new law in one state would force colleges to refund a quarter of the spring tuition.

Among the colleges facing lawsuits are Emory University and the Savannah College of Art and Design. Students at SCAD are seeking tuition refunds since the shuttering of the campuses denied them “in-person classes, access to facilities, access to physical resources, on-campus activities, and in-person networking opportunities,” according to the complaint.

Essentially, these lawsuits argue that students didn’t sign up for a University of Phoenix. “We believe that Emory’s community — the students that regularly fill

its campus, and the parents and guardians who afford their enrollment — deserve payback for the tens of thousands of dollars they paid for tuition and other expenses following Emory’s campus closure and lack of accessible resources to its student body,” said attorney Steve Berman, whose law firm has filed similar suits against Duke, Boston University, Brown, George Washington University and Vanderbilt.

In its response, an Emory spokeswoman said, “When the spring semester was disrupted by COVID-19, Emory University continued to provide our students with an excellent education as they make academic progress toward earning a degree.”

A bill in the New Jersey Legislature would require higher education institutions in the state to issue a 25% refund of spring tuition “to any student who enrolled in and submitted payment for an in-person course of instruction which course instead was provided in a virtual or remote format due to the public health emergency.”

On dozens of campuses, students are petitioning for refunds. A petition at Georgia State University asking for a 30% tuition refund asserts, “Many students cannot handle the pressures and responsibility of taking all online courses, not only are we studying on our own, we are now teaching ourselves when we paid for instructors to teach us.”

The University System of Georgia migrated 40,000 classes to virtual formats in two weeks after emptying its 26 campuses to combat the spread of COVID-19. At a Board of Regents meeting last week, Chancellor Steve Wrigley praised campuses for a successful transition to online instruction.

Reviews from students are not as glowing, with many urging a pass/fail option due to the sudden and, in some cases, shaky leap to distance learning. During a Zoom meeting with legislators about pass/fail, University of Georgia freshman Candler Jones said, “Online, I find myself struggling just to get through basic things that I thrived in at UGA.”

“While there is a myth that any student can learn just as effectively online or in person, my experience has made me think otherwise,” said Georgia education professor Bryan Sorohan. “Our administrators insist that any course can be taught online, and that’s probably true. But learning effectively online requires a set of skills and dispositions that many students may not bring to the table, and it may also disadvantage skills and dispositions many students have developed and depended on in the past for success in their on-ground courses.”

In a letter Friday to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, two Democratic senators, Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, requested continued flexibility for distance education but also sought “reporting requirements and other guardrails to ensure the integrity of distance education programs.”

Legal attacks on online classes threaten already jeopardized college coffers. With states cutting higher ed budgets due to the pandemic, campuses don’t want to discount tuition if they must resort to remote instruction again in the fall.

Some have already made that decision. The California State University System — the nation’s largest with nearly half a million students — announced last week that online classes will continue for the fall. On the same day, Chancellor Wrigley reaffirmed Georgia’s intention to resume in-person instruction in the fall, if health conditions permit.

Most high school seniors planning to start college in the fall seek the traditional campus experience. With concerns over whether campuses will reopen, students are torn on whether to commit or take a gap year, prompting some colleges to extend deadlines for deposits to reserve fall spots.

A Facebook-based survey by the consulting firm Tyton Partners found parents of current and prospective students skeptical of distance learning and frustrated with what they considered a gap between the on-campus experience and remote instruction. More than 40% were either uncertain or wouldn’t send their child for the fall semester for distance learning. More nerve-wracking for colleges, 97% of parents of high school seniors expressed discomfort with their child attending college via online classes, with 55% requiring a reduction in price to feel comfortable.

“The biggest concern among colleges is declining enrollment,” said Stephen L. Pruitt, a former top Georgia Department of Education official, the ex-Kentucky commissioner of education and now president of the Southern Regional Education Board. “What they don’t know yet — are they going to have people show up in the fall?”

Students want to return to their classrooms in the fall, and Georgia public colleges are planning to do so at this point. But the chancellor said the resumption of face-to-face classes is contingent on the guidance of state health officials.