
Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures - hhs
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/863804342/colleges-face-student-lawsuits-seeking-refunds-after-coronavirus-closures
======
ben7799
This is just the straw that is popping the college bubble.

My Alma mater has 15 administrators who make 2-3x more than the President did
when I graduated. The President makes $5 million+. The VP/Dean of HR makes >
$1 million.

Administrators took a 5% pay cut. Lots of professors are furloughed or laid
off.

The school did all kinds of shenanigans to hang onto as much
tuition/board/food money as they could. Students are not getting what they
paid for, so of course they are suing.

It's the same story as every other industry in the US.. the
administrators/executives trying to rob everyone blind while they can.

Alumni have been furious for years now, this isn't helping.

~~~
zbrozek
It was obvious while I was a student that the ratio of administrators to
faculty was ridiculous. And the growth rate ratio between them was 3:1. At no
point was it clear to me what real value they were adding. I was the captain
of a more capital and real-estate intensive than average student group, and it
was absolutely infuriating to try to figure out how to get anything done.
There was always some new bureaucrat condensing out of the ether who needed to
be appeased. No meant no, but a yes was never enough.

To be quite honest, I see the same thing in my professional work. Everyone
feels that their problems deserve more headcount. And heads make work,
justifying more heads. Further, those heads want to get promoted, so they
make-work to justify that too. And to compound the problem, people try to
magnify their power and impact by becoming gatekeepers. More people to say no
and more overhead and drag to every action.

It's unfortunately difficult to ask and to honestly answer why we do things
and whether those things are worthwhile. It's even harder to take corrective
action even if you admit that what you're doing is not worthwhile. I think
it's one of the pillars of cost disease that is nibbling away the on-the-
ground productivity of Western societies.

~~~
vkou
> Everyone feels that their problems deserve more headcount.

Take two teams, one with 6 people that produce a lot of value, and one with 50
people that produce... Let's say the same amount of value.

When the manager of the team with 6 people, in the same org, starts getting
paid three times more than the manager of the team of 50, you'll stop seeing
managers fight for headcount.

All of the economic incentives in the workplace lead to bloat, because people
aren't paid for value added - they are paid market rate. The market rate for a
manager of 50 people is higher than the market rate of a manager of 6 people.

It's like the gripe that engineers have in firms that don't have an
engineering career track for vertical advancement. Good engineers are pushed
into becoming managers, because that's the only way they can get rewarded.
Likewise, managers are pushed into becoming managers of larger teams, because
that's the only way they can get rewarded.

~~~
hagy
I agree, but quantifying value add is very hard. If we were just comparing
small companies against each other then it would be straightforward to just
look at each companies profit. But when you look at a team within a company,
how can we say what that teams value add is?

Say we considered a simplified case and focused on a single engineering team
that is solely responsible for a single product. Just looking at the revenue
generated by that product is insufficient since it excludes the contributions
of sales, marketing, business development, etc. in driving that revenue. And
practice most engineering teams are dependent on other engineering teams for
providing shared services and infrastructure.

Its also insufficient to just consider current revenue of a product. We also
need to consider the potential future gains from a product, which is unknown.

And quantifying value add gets even harder when we start looking at individual
people. Considering individual contributor engineers, there are numerous ways
that one can contribute, ranging from developing new features, diagnosing and
fixing bugs, writing and updating documentation, mentoring, interviewing
candidates, etc.

------
jawns
The reason there is such a large premium for on-campus education versus online
universities is because on-campus education is an _experience_ as much as it
is a service.

If you're only interested in mastering the content, then online learning may
be the place for you. That's why we see so many people pursuing online courses
for their master's degrees and when they return to school later in life. They
just want the content; they don't need (or have time for) the on-campus
experience aspect of college.

The on-campus college experience encompasses so much more than just acquiring
knowledge based on what's taught in class. It's dorm life, it's
extracurriculars, it's meeting people and forming friendships and hanging out
with them outside of class time. It's being in a place where there are so many
interesting people to meet. It's being in a relatively forgiving environment
where practically everyone is figuring out how to live on their own (or with
roommates) for the first time. Being physically present in that environment is
a key draw.

For me, the VAST majority of the value I got out of my on-campus education was
the stuff that happened outside of class time. And I'm not even talking about
the friendships or the networking or the fun. I'm talking about my actual
education. For instance, I learned a lot more about journalism by working for
the campus newspaper than from classroom instruction. And I don't think that
atmosphere or energy can be easily recreated virtually.

I say that, by the way, as a remote worker who has had to spend a lot of time
convincing managers and higher-ups that yes, remote workers can be as
productive and energized as in-office workers. Remote workers are generally
happier when they're not looking to their job to supply all of their social
needs. But an on-campus experience is much more all-encompassing in terms of
what needs and desires it fulfills for post-adolescents.

~~~
jerf
The problem is, if you're going to fall back on that perspective, Real Life
(TM) has all those things too, and it will continue to do so, for essentially
free. There will be clusters of that sort of thing somewhere, just as there
are "retirement communities" and "bedroom communities" and such. Universities
certainly aren't bringing anywhere near enough value for their marginal
improvement on those matters vs. what would exist without them to be worth
decades of crushing debt.

If you surrender on what the Universities have to offer intellectually, then
you're putting them in a position where they're going to be competing with
generalized social forces that can create similar clusters of demographically-
concentrated appeal _without_ having to pay administrators and deans and
speech police and all that stuff, and the universities will never be able to
win carrying around such baggage.

"And I don't think that atmosphere or energy can be easily recreated
virtually."

It can't be recreated virtually. But it _can_ be recreated without a
"University" attached to it.

If what the unis were offering was, you know, proportional to the gain, maybe
1/5th to 1/10th the cost they are now, then maybe it would still be worth it.
But paying gold-plated prices for "social experiences marginally better than
what you could put together yourself if they weren't there" is not a
sustainable plan, or an adequate defense for their practices.

Viva la disaggregation.

~~~
jawns
The counterpoint to your argument is that if it is so easy to create those
types of communities for much less money than what universities are charging,
why hasn't it happened?

I would guess that it's a combination of 1. not being as easy as it seems and
2. network effects. Because of the latter, you would basically have to
persuade a large number of students to make the switch at the same time for
them to feel as if they still have the social/professional networking they get
from the on-campus experience.

~~~
coryrc
It's illegal to create living communities for young people. You are allowed to
discriminate against people younger than 55, but not against any other age
criteria.

It's another example in the unending list of losses in this generational war.

~~~
Avicebron
Genuine question, is it illegal if the people are older than 18? Possibly with
resident adults acting in some supervisory role. I'm imagining dorm like
satellite communities for collective remote online learning.

~~~
coryrc
I would doubt requiring the individuals be able to agree to contracts would be
illegal, this effectively would be 18+.

But you won't get young women joining if you also have to allow 55-yr-old male
leches live next door. In University this is rare, but SROs can't discriminate
in the same way.

~~~
Avicebron
I'll cede we don't want 55-yr-old leches next door to young adults. But I'm
not sure it's necessary it has to be an SRO, if from what I understand is a
term for low income/homeless focused housing. There should be a way for the
lower priced remote college tuition to pay for the housing and requirements
for only remote attendees to live there. But maybe I'm not seeing something.

~~~
coryrc
Dorms are SROs -- it means a place where you rent a room but share other
amenities, like bathrooms and kitchens. It is usually low-income, but most
people are low income when young.

It's illegal to create the "college experience" (nearly only 18-22 year-olds
living together) without University because filtering directly by age is
illegal, while doing so indirectly is legal. I think 12 years of education
should be enough for most people and we shouldn't require unnecessary
schooling to let people have the college experience.

~~~
pdfernhout
Thanks for your insights on age discrimination issues and housing experiences.
That said, there can be communities of all ages that are vibrant spaces to be
in -- and which also have places within that are gathering spots (e.g.
libraries, cafes, bars, workplaces, churches, non-profit organizations, sports
leagues, etc.) for people with something in common (whether age or interests
or work or whatever). And I'm not just saying that because I am mid-fifties.
:-)

Also, while young people obviously do like to hang out with similar-aged
people for all sorts of reasons (including to find romantic partners), there
also is value in encountering a diversity of experiences. When I was in
college, informal interactions with older people, whether RAs, grad students,
older returning students, staff, and faculty (outside classes) provided many
formative experiences. And likewise, interactions with younger people (like
tutoring a faculty member's kid) provide opportunities for personal growth
through teaching, coaching, and mentoring.

Even at college, how many people can the typical person get to know or have as
friends or romantic partners? How many friends and romantic partners does a
typical person need to be relatively happy? What does it take to provide those
opportunities?

Many people 100 years ago used to find that in cities perhaps (especially
walkable low-rise ones like Philadelphia) -- but cities have changed for many
reasons (including ones Jane Jacobs wrote about). Still, even now, many people
flock to some cities for social connection opportunities. (Even as they may
later in life flock elsewhere to raise families for various reasons...)

I am not saying most of the cities we have now in the USA are ideal for making
social connections -- especially compared to many older European cities that
are more walkable and were built with people in mind and not cars. Places
favored by some religious communities (e.g. Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh where
Mr. Fred Rogers really lived in a real neighborhood) may sometime be more
community-promoting given, say, for observant Jews a cultural need to walk to
a social hub one day a week which affects the urban layout generally in a
positive way. In that sense, perhaps the Protestant Mr. Rogers benefited from
neighborhood architecture shaped in part by Jewish traditions? Searching on
"walkshed" can turn up some interesting results, for example:
[https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-
neighborhoods/](https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/)

Potentially a good aspect of social media is it may (paradoxically) help
people find local people with similar interests to arrange physical
gatherings. But arranged gatherings are not the same as spontaneous repeated
meetings in common areas -- which has been the basis of the formation of most
friendships. Still, one can ask how all that could be made better.

Consider, for the bigger picture, the intersection of architecture, culture,
and friendships: "How our housing choices make adult friendships more
difficult" by David Roberts [https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-
adult-friends...](https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-
friendship) "Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial
ways by the physical spaces in which we live. "Land use," as it's rather
aridly known, shapes behavior and sociality. And in America we have settled on
patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent
spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built. ...
For the vast majority of Homo sapiens' history, we lived in small, nomadic
bands. The tribe, not the nuclear family, was the primary unit. We lived among
others of various ages, to which we were tied by generations of kinship and
alliance, throughout our lives. Those are the circumstances in which our
biological and neural equipment evolved. It's only been comparatively recently
(about 10,000 years ago) that we developed agriculture and started living in
semi-permanent communities, more recently still that were thrown into cities,
crammed up against people we barely know, and more recently still that we
bounced out of cities and into suburbs. So everything about how we live now is
"unnatural," at least in terms of the scope of human history. Unnatural
doesn't necessarily mean bad — our long lifespans are unnatural too — but it
should remind us that the particular socially constructed living patterns
common today have shallow roots. There's nothing fated or inevitable about
each of us living in our own separate nuclear-family castles, with our own
little faux-estate lawns, getting in a car to go anywhere, never seeing
friends unless we make an effort to schedule it. ... As external conditions
change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists
since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity;
repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let
their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor
of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college,
she added. ... This kind of spontaneous social mixing doesn't disappear in
post-collegiate life. We bond with co-workers, especially in those scrappy
early jobs, and the people who share our rented homes and apartments. But when
we marry and start a family, we are pushed, by custom, policy, and
expectation, to move into our own houses. And when we have kids, we find
ourselves tied to those houses. ... Say you're a family with children and you
don't regularly attend church (as is increasingly common). There are basically
two ways to have regular, spontaneous encounters with people. Both are rare in
America. One is living in a real place, a walkable area with lots of shared
public spaces, around which one can move relatively safely and effectively
without a car. It seems like a simple thing, but such places are rare even in
the cities where they exist. ... Walkable communities are very difficult to
find in the US, and because there is such paucity of supply relative to
demand, they are expensive, accessible only to the high-income. Places where
they exist tend to have absurd zoning restrictions that prevent growing them.
... The second, even more rare, is some form of co-housing. ... The idea
behind baugruppen, and co-housing generally, is that it's nice to live in an
extended community, to have people to rely on beyond family. It's nice to have
bustling shared spaces where you can run into people you know without planning
it beforehand. It's nice to have nearby friends for your kids, places where
they can play safely, and other adults who can share kid-tending duties....
Both these alternatives — walkable communities and co-housing — sound exotic
to American ears. Thanks to shifting baselines, most Americans only know
single-family dwellings and auto-dependent land use. They cannot even
articulate what they are missing and often misidentify the solution as more or
different private consumption. But I do not think we should just accept that
when we marry and start families, we atomize, and our friendships, like our
taste in music, freeze where they were when we were young and single. We
shouldn't just accept a way of living that makes interactions with neighbors
and friends a burden that requires special planning. We should recognize that
by shrinking our network of strong social ties to our immediate families, we
lose something important to our health and social identities, with the
predictable result that we are ridden with anxiety and loneliness. We are
meant to have tribes, to be among people who know us and care about us. ..."

At first glance, sure, it may seem to make sense to ask how can we recreate
the college social experience for people 18-22 without the high price of
"University". But a deeper question is perhaps: how can we have a culture and
architecture that promotes friendships? While also still having access to
natural settings that are also improve mental health?

Here is a quote about an even deeper aspect of all that related to depression
(which can strike people even in the "best" college where social needs are
perhaps met -- but others might be neglected like getting enough sleep,
omega3-s, sunshine & vitamin D, exercise, downtime & creativity-provoking-
boredom, purpose, and so on): [https://tlc.ku.edu/](https://tlc.ku.edu/) "We
were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-
isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. (Stephen Ilardi,
PhD)"

So, an even deeper and more general question is: how can we have a culture and
architecture and economy that promotes life-long wellness and happiness?

------
jkingsbery
I don't know about the legal question, but I think universities are setting
themselves up for pain by arguing that the online experience they've been
offering isn't substantially different from the in-person experience they had
been offering. It's easy to imagine people calling their bluff on this,
choosing to do remote learning even after COVID-19 goes away if it will save
$100k+ over 4 years, and a subsequent contraction in the number of
universities we need to educate people.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
Universities are not arguing this.

If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have
already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these
lawsuits.

The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to
collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this
decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all
employees and simply delay education until after Coronavirus.

Instead, they made the best of the situation and tried to do right by the
students as best they could within the financial, legal, and ethical
constraints of Coronavirus. In my opinion, it’s not reasonable to demand
universities operate at a loss to provide the remote education at a rate less
than it costs them to operate (which I suspect may be happening already in
some cases). We’re all making compromises under the circumstances.

I’d be more sympathetic if these students were requesting to defer their
education until after Coronavirus and were willing to forgo all education and
credits in the mean time. Demanding both the education and a refund isn’t
exactly fair.

~~~
andreilys
Georgia tech offers a fantastic online CS masters program for $6.6k (1/6th of
the cost of on campus degree).

I highly doubt that these universities have offered even close to a 5/6th
refund to their students.

~~~
krapht
Eh, qualify fantastic. It's great in that the courses are difficult, and if
you complete them it will signal you are smart computer scientist; it's backed
by GaTech's name brand and the diploma is the same as the on-campus diploma.

It's not fantastic in that the courses vary wildly in quality, are mostly
taught by teaching assistants, can require 20 or more hours of (busy-ish
depending on course) work per week, and just like undergrad, you will struggle
and be forced to teach yourself the material instead of being taught a
significant portion of the time. Usually the textbook is much more informative
than the lecture; your life is better if you own many textbooks on the subject
since often the lecture information density and coherence is poor.

What I'm saying is, the course lectures are pretty mediocre for ~40% of
offered courses. OMSCS is valuable because it's cheap and prestigious, not
because the instruction is high-quality. It's great for self-starters, auto-
didacts, and hard-workers with background in the subjects (admittedly, most
students from decent engineering schools will qualify).

~~~
andreilys
Fantastic in that you can easily graduate debt-free with a degree that sends a
strong signal in industry.

The alternative is graduating 6-figures in debt, and having missed out on all
the benefits of on-campus learning.

------
acomjean
I was taking a class that transitioned online. (University extension school,
biostatistics). So the networking and campus related activities don't relate
to me. At the extension school, some classes were taught online already (this
one was in person only).

I felt the teaching staff made a pretty huge effort to get things online and
running well. I'm sure they weren't getting paid more to make the transition.

There was a general feeling of, this sucks but lets through it. It was a lot
more work for faculty and students (It takes longer to learn material
remotely, at least for me..). I don't think diplomas will have asterix next to
them, saying "finished online", like the article indicates.

Going forward, what tuition is going to be if classes are online in the fall
is another issue. I'm guessing universities will charge what they can.

~~~
elwes5
My guess the tuition will be similar in price. However, if it were me going to
college at this time I would seriously consider skipping a year/semester if
they did that. Get a small time job somewhere and help get ahead of the loans
I already racked up. But that is just me. It became crystal clear to me a few
years ago that these schools had gone off the rails price wise. My wife was
taking 1 class. The book was more than the class and the previous semester you
could not buy used. Ironically the class was micro economics.

~~~
Cldfire
I would love the option to be able to skip a semester or two of college, but
unfortunately if I made that choice I'd lose all of my scholarships and it
would end up costing me more than whatever I'd make in the meantime :(

------
at_a_remove
Reddit's "AskReddit" subreddit had a question recently hosted with a title
something along the lines of "How did your college financially screw you over
in this crisis?" The answers were varied and often ... "shocking" is the wrong
word, because I have come to expect a kind of compulsive money-grubbing from
many universities ... perhaps "flinch-inducing." Certainly the local subreddit
for my city discussed similar money-grabs, nickel-and-diming, and general
high-handed behavior interspersed with a general lack of competency.

Even universities with some staggeringly large endowments will cry poor and
point to the endowments being tied up in various investments, which _did_ take
a turn down at the start, but looking at the Dow I see that the numbers are
nearly back to what they were in May of 2019.

Many universities are staggeringly bloated, yet squeeze their faculty via
adjuncts, then squeeze the adjuncts in turn. Why pay tenured faculty rates
when you can throw in an adjunct? And then why pay the adjunct well? After
all, we have these enormous administrative budgets. Having had access to some
historical employer data and performing general tracking as part of a "make
sure that the input is within historical limits" sanity check, I noted that
staff, "important" staff, had grown massively over a decade.

Now the on-campus college experience, for which so much is subtracted from
student accounts in funding various events and facilities, is largely remote,
well, that "value-add" is now a "where's the beef?" moment.

~~~
irskep
This is the thread the parent comment is talking about, I think.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gqb30j/uni_stude...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gqb30j/uni_students_of_reddit_what_is_the_biggest/)

------
cg505
> "In my personal opinion, I can deliver the same quality of education online
> as I could in person."

Although this statement is debatable to begin with, it also misses a huge
point. Even if the quality of an online education is the same, many students
cannot learn as anywhere near as well in that environment. They paid tens of
thousands of dollars for in-person learning, so for that to be replaced with
something entirely different in form really sucks.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
As the article stated, many of these universities did give partial refunds.
The students are demanding even more refunds while still collecting the
education.

I’m curious: Would you consider the same argument valid for workers forced to
work remotely? Would you be upset if a company decided to cut workers’ pay in
half during COVID19 remote work under the assumption that some workers can’t
be as efficient remotely? After all, the company paid hundreds of thousands of
dollars for in-person work, but now they’re getting potentially worse remote
work.

~~~
ksaun
> As the article stated, many of these universities did give partial refunds.
> The students are demanding even more refunds while still collecting the
> education.

To be clear, the article doesn't state that partial refunds of tuition have
been offered, but that "many did offer partial refunds of dorm and activities
fees."

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
Anecdata from my little corner. My 'non-profit' university's president is at
800k, his VP is 500k and multiple other admin officials in similar range. It
is hard not to have a bitter taste as they just offered the students $500
grant application for their COVID19 trouble.

If there is one good thing about this pandemic, it is shining a light on all
this.

~~~
secabeen
And from the other end of the spectrum, at my University of California campus,
the top salaries are all in the 300k range, and all go to world-class
engineering and sciences faculty who bring in millions in research grants each
year. The chancellor, deans and one coach also break 300k, but that's it.

So, different schools, different governance models, different outcomes.

~~~
p1esk
Looking at UC system, I see that UCSB chancellor received $415k compensation,
9th highest at UCSB, but only 750th highest across UC campuses! Top two
salaries went to athletic coaches at UCLA.

[https://dailynexus.com/2018-09-06/ucsb-payroll-totaled-
appro...](https://dailynexus.com/2018-09-06/ucsb-payroll-totaled-
approximately-500-million-in-2017/)

------
LanceH
I think the offshoot of this will be that student/university contracts are
about to become massive one sided EULA's with all liability on the student
side.

------
easterncalculus
Refunds are a pretty hard thing for universities to do though, in a lot of
cases the money has already been spent. If the question is how much they
charge for next semester (assuming closure or mostly online learning) then I
think there's a stronger argument to not charge students as much.

The student perspective is basically that you're already paying so much, that
the least the university can do is do good on what's being paid for or in the
event where that is not possible, simply don't charge for what's not going to
happen in the fall.

~~~
michaelt
_> in a lot of cases the money has already been spent_

Then they can take out loans or go bankrupt.

I mean, if you paid for a Ferrari and the car dealer can only give you a
Corolla, they owe you a refund - irrespective of how big their rent and salary
bills may be.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
If they were forced to choose between going bankrupt and having traditional
in-person classes, they would be offering in-person classes right now and
allowing people to “opt-out” to the remote version.

These companies aren’t arbitrarily choosing to educate people remotely.
They’re adapting to the situation.

Likewise, it would be unreasonable for employers to cut people’s compensation
for working remotely under the assumption that remote work is less efficient
and therefore the company deserves a refund.

~~~
michaelt
And maybe a car dealer couldn't deliver your Ferrari due to difficult
circumstances beyond their control, and giving you a Corolla is the best they
can adapt to the situation.

But they're _still only delivering a Corolla_ so you _don 't have to pay the
price of the Ferrari they promised you_

~~~
PragmaticPulp
But you’re not car shopping and this isn’t a Ferrari vs. Corolla scenario.

If you read the article, you’ll see that the Universities did give partial
refunds. These students are demanding even more refunds, while still
collecting the education.

The education is still delivered, just through a different medium. If we
believe that engineers can work just as effectively remotely, why can’t we
believe that educators and educate just as effectively remotely? It feels like
HN is picking and choosing when remote is good vs. bad based on how it
personally benefits the commenter.

~~~
asutekku
People do not pay to get only the education. Yes, it is a prominent part of it
but more important are the facilities, the community and the networking
capabilities. With remote teaching, everything else except learning is lost.

There’s no reason to pay the sums the universities are charging considering
you can get the same education from almost any university.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> There’s no reason to pay the sums the universities are charging considering
> you can get the same education from almost any university.

I think you’re arguing against something other than the Coronavirus and remote
education situation at this point.

~~~
asutekku
No I am not. Due the current circumstances, the universities are not able to
provide the facilities and the networking capabilities to the students so they
should not be required to pay the full amount.

Also, as the students are going to be home anyway, the differences between
universities shrink. If the education is somewhat similar in a university A
and university B, but university A is five times more expensive during the
normal times, why should the students of university A pay five times as much
as the students at the university B. They have lost the reason why they pay so
much for it.

------
andygcook
It's interesting that the short term solution of not giving refunds will
likely cause long-term pain for universities because they are then admitting
that remote is "the same as" in person. Most of the university value is in the
experience. I'd predict that if colleges don't admit in person > online and
don't offer refunds, then many students will decide to save the $150K over
four years and just take online courses, then live in an interesting city to
get that life/social experience.

------
caseysoftware
I think this will boil down to:

a) What did the college promise?

b) Did the college deliver it?

Since there's unlikely a formal contract involved, they'll have to make a case
with the public marketing and value prop which includes peers, access to
professors, dorm life, state of the art labs, extracurriculars, a beautiful
campus, alumni network, job fairs, etc.

Most of these colleges have spent years devaluing the content itself by
putting it online for free and now that's one of the few things they're still
offering.. for the small price of $X0,000/year.

~~~
jjeaff
While I agree tuition is too high, people have gone a little crazy with using
the most expensive outliers as examples. Average tuition for state schools in
2018 was around $9,000 and I don't think that includes financial aid and
scholarships.

And to complain about the coat of private schools is a bit like browsing
around in a BMW dealership and complaining about how everything is too
expensive.

Not to mention that if you are low income, there are lots of very nearly free
options.

------
naveen99
Few people I know with children in private schools(k-12) are planning on
paying full tuition regardless of weather the next academic year is virtual or
physical...

~~~
geomark
Same with me. My kid is in an international school. The school offered an
insultingly small refund that made a lot of parents angry. Not me personally,
because I understand that their largest cost by far is teachers, and that cost
does not go away unless they furlough the teachers, which is a big problem
since they probably can't get them back when they reopen. Second thing is that
most parents depend heavily on the daycare aspect of school which is not being
delivered.

------
dang
A related thread from later today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23346858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23346858)

------
peter303
I wonder how many US colleges will go under if many students dont return after
the covid vaccine appears. Many were already hurting from a small GenZ cohort,
competition from well-paying non-degree opportunities (now dubious), and
current administration strangulation of immigrant scholars.

------
paulcole
Investors should step in and pay the kids off (since these lawsuits are either
guaranteed losers or will take years to settle). Then in exchange take a % of
their future earnings. Vary the % and timeline based on the degree they're
seeking.

~~~
ouid
This is indentured servitude, and expressly forbidden in the United States.

~~~
barry-cotter
No it isn’t.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_share_agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_share_agreement)

> An income share agreement (or ISA) is a financial structure in which an
> individual or organization provides something of value (often a fixed amount
> of money) to a recipient who, in exchange, agrees to pay back a percentage
> of their income for a fixed number of years.

...

> Common Concerns Indentured Servitude

> However, advocates of ISAs contend that since students have no legal
> obligation to work in a particular industry, and since it is illegal for
> investors to pressure them into a certain career, students are no more
> “indentured” than those with a student loan. In fact, someone with a
> traditional student loan has less choice than someone with an ISA, because
> the student with a loan needs to be in a career where they make at least
> enough income to cover their monthly payment, whereas someone with an ISA
> can choose to never make any money, and would never owe the investor a dime.

~~~
dragandj
Someone who does not make any money doesn't need to care about student loans
either. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the debt collectors can only
collect what exists. They can't force you into the debtors prison. As long as
you don't have anything, you don't have to worry about anyone coming after you
(in the USA).

~~~
barry-cotter
If you have assets you need to care about debt but the same is not true of an
income share agreement. You can have assets without income from sources other
than selling those assets.

------
rb808
Colleges should just open up. Young students are low risk that they're
unlikely to be very sick if/when they contract disease. There will be some old
or unhealthy staff members that can be protected.

California and NY have stronger lock down rules, but people should just
transfer to Texas, Florida places that are more open.

~~~
alistairSH
While true that younger people are less at risk than older people, that risk
is non-zero and significant.

You also ignore that students don't isolate themselves within the walls of the
college. They are a part of that community, using dining and retail
facilities, traveling home, visiting nearby cities, etc. That puts their
parents and families at risk, locals at risk, etc.

~~~
mennis16
Not to mention the majority of professors would be considered at least
moderate risk. Maybe I just had a particularly good experience but I got to
interact with a number of profs quite a bit during undergrad. Paying for in-
person with only a bunch of TAs just wouldn't be worth it IMO, plus things
like campus events would also have to be limited. It would take most of the
benefits of the college experience out of the picture. I think gap year is the
way to go for anyone that can make it work, regardless of whether the schools
try to do online only or make accomodations for in-person.

------
tlibert
Faculty member at a top-tier CS school. For most of the faculty where I am, an
hourly consulting fee in the range of $500-1000 is reasonable. If you take the
low-end of that range ($500) x 3 hours of class time per week ($1500) x 12
weeks of class you get $18,000 worth of expert time. Multiply that by three
classes and you get $54k of value each semester, so even with non-trivial
tuition it is still a pretty good deal. Likewise, FAANG et al recruit very
heavily from our school so there is additional value-add.

I personally came from modest means and have a ton of outstanding student debt
and was hesitant to go the faculty route precisely because I think the higher
education in the US can be financially exploitative, but there are places
where the high tuition is in fact a bargain based on market rates for the
expertise. Likewise, nearly all faculty at top-tier CS schools can make way
more in the private sector - we do this job because we really enjoy mentoring
and work hard to make sure our students get the best education possible.

~~~
manquer
That kind of consulting fees for 1:20 shared time with so many other students
on topics they don't control flow of ??? (i.e. I don't get to choose the
specifics on topic you are "consulting" on or dictate what and how you teach
me).

I wouldn't be able charge $ 10,000 - $20,000 for a 1:1 consulting session !
There are very very few people in the world who can command that kind of
premium

