From the issue dated September 14, 2001
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Should Distance Students Pay for Campus-Based Services?Many colleges charge them for parking, sports, and more; competition may end the practice By DAN CARNEVALE
Atlanta
Aimee Coughlin appreciated the convenience of earning her bachelor's degree online over the past few years. But it cost more than she would have liked.
"Of course I wasn't real happy about that, because of course I didn't use any of it," Ms. Coughlin says. Her experience is not unusual. Students who take online courses from institutions that offer both traditional and online programs often end up paying for services they don't use -- athletics, student organizations, day care. Administrators acknowledge that these charges aren't fair, but solving the problem isn't easy. Students who live on the campus and students who live a hundred miles away can take the same online courses together, and trying to decide who should pay what -- and why -- can be a lengthy and fractious process. Meanwhile, fee policies can be cumbersome and confusing to online students, who may not realize, when they sign up for an online course, the fees they'll be required to pay on top of tuition. Student-fee structures have always been unfair to some degree -- not every undergraduate gets sick enough to visit the student-health service, for instance, and some students may use a fee-supported campus bus service every day while classmates who have paid the same fee ride their bikes to and fro. But when online students live hundreds of miles away, paying fees for campus services can become a source of considerably greater discontent. As online education expands, online students are becoming pickier about what they are willing to pay for. And with competition for online students growing, colleges are finding themselves forced to rethink their fee policies. Some have rewritten the rules to accommodate online students. Others -- like the University System of Georgia, of which Clayton State is part -- are experimenting to see what works best. Some institutions haven't bothered to look at the issue at all. Western Washington University, for example, charges the same fees to online and on-campus students, unless the online courses are from the university's extension program, which sets its own fees. The University of Wisconsin System, by contrast, put on-campus charges into a category called "segregated fees" in 1999. Distance students don't have to pay them. But it's up to individual institutions in the system to adopt the segregated-fee structure, and not all of them have done so, says Freda Harris, assistant vice president for budget and planning. Online students still have to pay the fees if they take courses through colleges that stick with the old fee system. Universities that have considered the issue have come up with a variety of responses. Some have erased traditional fees for online students, only to begin charging them technology fees that cost as much or more. Other institutions waive some fees for online students, but keep others. The University of Connecticut's College of Continuing Studies doesn't charge off-campus students the $15 transit fee for the bus system, says Judy Buffolino, director of distance education. But all students, on or off the campus, have to pay the campus-infrastructure fee, which runs $33 for up to five credits and $65 for six to 11 credits, she says. At Clayton State, students this semester pay $195 in fees whether they attend classes on the campus or online. If the fees were waived for all students taking online courses, the institution estimates that it would lose about $195,000 in income. Administrators note that many online students live in the residence halls and are regular users of the services paid for by the fees. Those students take some of their courses online as a matter of convenience. Janis H. Bruwelheide, director of a federally financed project called Borderless Access to Training and Education, at the University of Montana at Bozeman, collects information on distance-education programs and the fees they charge. She has found no real pattern, she says. "It's all over the map. I think a lot of institutions just haven't thought about it yet." Some colleges are trying to make their fee structures fairer for distance students, says Bruce N. Chaloux, director of the Southern Regional Education Board's Electronic Campus, a distance-education collaboration among Southern states. "Clearly the trend is to unbundle the fee structure to make it more appropriate to the students that are not on campus." "The real challenge," he says, is when "you have a student on campus who's taking all of his courses through an e-learning mode." Georgia's university system, for its part, charges most undergraduate students the same tuition and fees, regardless of where they take a course. System officials acknowledge that this approach is unfair for those students who never visit the campus. "If I'm a total off-site student, there's no way I'm going to take advantage of those services," says William Bowes, vice chancellor for fiscal affairs. Ms. Coughlin, the dental-hygiene student, had earned an associate degree from Clayton State back in 1990 through traditional courses. Sticking with the same college as an online student was a comfortable choice, so she decided to go ahead and pay the extra fees. "I just felt like the education was still worth it," she says. "Not that I was excited about paying that much money, but I accepted it." Later, however, she approached the Clayton State officials about a fee refund. They returned some of the money -- including a $300 laptop fee that was discontinued this semester -- but not all of it. "I had to jump through a few hoops," she says. "They were extremely nice, and they all tried to help me." Officials at the University System of Georgia are working to make sure that future online graduates won't face the same hoops. In the fall of 2000, a pilot program called eCore was started to attract more students to undergraduate programs. It allows a student to enroll at any of five member colleges, take a block of 14 online courses, and then transfer the credits to any undergraduate institution in the Georgia system. Those courses represent the first two years of the student's college career. To entice students into eCore, fees for those 14 courses are waived. Tuition is set at $100 per credit hour, slightly higher than for a typical course, but without the fees most students save money. For example, in-state students at Clayton State pay $81 per credit hour for most courses, and only for up to 12 hours of course work. "The concept was that eCore could provide a model policy for distance-education tuition and fees," says Mr. Bowes. Of the hundreds of online courses offered by the Georgia system, the 14 eCore courses are a tiny fraction. But given that they are basic to an undergraduate degree, Georgia officials expect them to be popular. System officials say they will begin reviewing the eCore program after they have accumulated a couple of years' worth of data. Then they'll decide whether a flat-rate, feeless policy can be used for all online courses. The eCore program isn't the only exception to the Georgia system's standard fee structure. Fees are also waived for students who take courses at off-campus centers and in special workshops, and for those taking graduate-level courses online. Mr. Bowes says there will always be administrative difficulties, no matter what the arrangement. "There will be loopholes in the policy. There could be distance students who want to avail themselves of these services." Even when some student fees are waived for online courses, other fees can creep in. The University of Houston waives $75 worth of fees for students who take courses entirely online. They don't have to pay the student-union fee, and they pay just half of the student-services fee, says Marshall Schott, director of educational technology and outreach on the Cinco Ranch campus, which collaborates with the system's other institutions to provide courses. But students at the university pay an additional $140 for each online course they take, up to two courses per semester. The fee is added to undergraduate tuition, which ranges from about $40 to $170 per credit hour. Administrators say the extra charge is for the convenience of taking online courses and the technology that makes the courses possible. Mr. Chaloux, of the Southern Regional Education Board, says colleges that waive the likes of athletics and health fees for online students often turn around and impose a technology fee that erases the savings. "When all is said and done, you've replaced one set of fees with another set of fees," he says. But paying technology fees is better for the online students, he argues, because the money is going toward programs and services that they use. They get what they pay for, he says. What will dictate the amount of fees is market demand, says Rick Skinner, president of the University System of Georgia's distance-learning program, called Georgia Global Learning Online for Business and Education. But what that market is and how it will change is up in the air, he says. "Nobody knows what the price sensitivity is." When shopping for an online program, students consider access, convenience, cost, and quality, he says. "If you give them convenience, they seem to want to pay some sort of a premium for that." Other institutions, like the for-profit University of Phoenix, serve adult students exclusively and have no on-campus services calling for fees. That puts them at a competitive advantage, says Brian Muller, chief operating officer of the University of Phoenix Online. "Our students just don't have the need for any extracurricular activities," he says. But that won't give such programs a monopoly in online education, he adds. Phoenix charges a higher tuition than many state institutions do. As more and more institutions, from community colleges to elite research universities, offer online programs, officials everywhere are going to have to balance cost -- including course fees -- and quality as prospective distance-education students do comparison shopping, Mr. Skinner warns. "Especially from the non-traditional student, I don't think we should ever underestimate them. These are pretty savvy retail customers." The fee structures at many institutions are confusing. Students may not be able to figure out what they are paying until they get their bills. At the University of Oregon, whether online students pay on-campus fees depends on the specific courses they take and the programs they are in, says Curt Lind, director of continuing education. Some on-campus fees have been waived for online courses, but some have not, and some online courses have an additional technology fee. "It's confusing, no question about that," he says. At the State University of West Georgia, Ginger Maring, a freshman, has a sharp eye for price and quality. She's taking her lower-division courses online and plans to major in business or math. Because her courses are part of the eCore program, her on-campus fees are waived. In citing what she looks for in an online program, price is the first thing she mentions, followed by accreditation. It is important to her that she not have to pay any fees for on-campus student services. "That was a big factor with me," she says. "I'm not even stepping foot on that campus. Why would I pay for any of that?" Each campus in the Georgia system has a committee, with at least half of its members students, to review proposed fees, Mr. Bowes says. Committee approval isn't required for the imposition of fees, but students have a voice in the process. No online students are on any of those committees, however, so their concerns are often not addressed. If Ms. Maring had to pay for on-campus fees, she says, she would round up students from her online courses and send e-mail demanding that their on-campus fees be done away with. Indeed, she's hoping that fees will be waived from all online courses by the time she's done with the eCore program, in two years. "They'll probably have the next step in place by then," she says. "If not, I'll be a catalyst to make it happen." CHECKS AND IMBALANCES At Clayton College and State University, all students -- on the campus and at a distance -- must pay these mandatory fees each semester.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A35
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Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education