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Parent of George Washington University student sues, says online classes inferior
WTOPNews ^ | May 5, 2020 | Neal Augenstein

Posted on 05/06/2020 11:10:55 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat

...Mark Shaffer’s suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks reimbursement for tuition, room and board, and other fees he paid at GW, where a semester typically costs more than $25,000...The suit said Shaffer’s daughter, and other students affected by the campus closure, have been deprived of in-person office hours with professors, involvement in student clubs and access to laboratory equipment, an experience which they “did not bargain for.”

The suit also accuses the university of engaging in breach of contract, unjust enrichment and conversion, or unlawfully keeping tuition, despite the shift to online classes.

(Excerpt) Read more at wtop.com ...


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: again
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Sounds like he looked over his daughter's shoulder as she was doing her online classes and saw all the propaganda he was paying for and got POed.
1 posted on 05/06/2020 11:10:55 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
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To: CheshireTheCat

Universities have become money-making institutions that benefit from putting young people with no money into debt.


2 posted on 05/06/2020 11:14:09 PM PDT by Telepathic Intruder
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To: CheshireTheCat

My landlord is taking on-line courses working towards his masters degree.
He said the on-line courses are more demanding because they require the student to do more actual reading and little to no lectures.
His take is the students are getting PO’d because they actually have to work and learn in order to pass the classes.
Also no parties and hanging out in overpriced bistros.
I tend to agree with him.


3 posted on 05/06/2020 11:22:12 PM PDT by oldvirginian (Oh what fresh hell is this!?!)
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To: CheshireTheCat

Better yet, sue China.


4 posted on 05/06/2020 11:24:53 PM PDT by Fresh Wind (This tagline is an advertisement-free zone. Is yours?)
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To: CheshireTheCat

No, listening to those instructors in person is far worse. Being discovered by the instructors is even worse than that for conservative students.


5 posted on 05/06/2020 11:28:38 PM PDT by familyop (Hell hath no fury like a scorned parrot.)
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To: CheshireTheCat

I loved online classes since I never paid attention in class anyway. Taught myself using the books.


6 posted on 05/06/2020 11:41:27 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: CheshireTheCat

My son’s Calculus 3 course went from “live” to online. The videos he has to watch are not from his professor. There is no opportunity to ask questions. There are no study groups because the university is closed. Everyone’s grades have dropped significantly since the course shifted to online. A number of students have since dropped the course. Final exam is next week.


7 posted on 05/06/2020 11:44:08 PM PDT by Cowboy Bob (Mocking Liberals is not only a right, but the duty of all Americans.)
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

I think the idea of online learning is fantastic, because you can watch lectures repeatedly and read the material until you get it.

However, they need a way to allow a student to ask questions when they are not getting a subject.


8 posted on 05/06/2020 11:46:31 PM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death by cultsther)
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To: Cowboy Bob

Math is nearly impossible to learn by just reading a book. It requires rote style learning and constant repetition and correction, which can only be done in class.


9 posted on 05/06/2020 11:50:19 PM PDT by LukeL
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To: CheshireTheCat
It takes a long time to set up a distance learning curriculum (I'm in a position to know) and quite a bit of that is training the instructors to cope with the new environment. There was no time for most institutions this time around to do that; some who had already entered the field found it easier than others who had to deal with crash programs. Which they had better do better, because this is the new face of higher education in the United States, like it or not.

It isn't the students - it's child's play (literally) to those who were brought up on Pokemon and MMORPGs. It isn't the curricula either - some of the best implementations I've seen are in ancient history. It's the professors. They talk a good game but believe me, they do not like change.

10 posted on 05/06/2020 11:58:10 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: CheshireTheCat
Sounds like he looked over his daughter's shoulder as she was doing her online classes and saw all the propaganda he was paying for and got POed.

No, I think not.

(My 21-year-old daughter is currently in her sixth semester in Allgemeine Linguistik at the prestigious Eberhard-Karls-Universität [Tübingen], and is likewise forced to attend only online courses.)

Rather, he noted that he is paying "top dollar" for his daughter to enjoy the "full-package" experience of attending a first-rate university, but that she is, instead, essentially receiving only the same experience she could have had by taking correspondence courses from the University of American Samoa ("Better Call Saul" reference) or from the Colombia University ("Community" reference).

Regards,

11 posted on 05/07/2020 12:10:36 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: CheshireTheCat

Just watching documentaries and You Tube videos will give you a better education than an online university course. He paid for an in person education. He is not getting what he paid for. This is first year contracts stuff. . Just because the university was shut down by the idiots in Washington or wherever does not absolve the university from paying back what they took when they can’t provide what they contracted to provide.

The contact has been breached. The university must refund the money it took.

On the other hand, if the money is returned then the university would not be required to give the student any credit for taking the classes. That might be a disincentive to demanding the money back.


12 posted on 05/07/2020 12:18:55 AM PDT by P-Marlowe (Freep mail me if you want to be on my Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitar Ping List)
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To: Jonty30

This reminds me: I once had a Chemistry class, the second one, with a professor who was complete trash.

Classmates couldn’t decide whether he was Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler, since we weren’t sure what his nationality was other than that he had a thick FOREIGN accent.

He routinely insulted the class, comparing us to Brittany Spears, and did not actually teach anything. There was no book for the class, and he would write hieroglyphics on the board, pictures of engines or whatnot, with no complete equations.

I actually shared photos of his lecture boards and recordings with a student who was about to graduate with a chemistry degree. He replied, “wtf is all of this? I don’t understand any of it.”

A professor in another class openly told us that the problem with the trash professor is that he treats the students like they already had a PhD in Chemistry. This was just a Chem 2 class. I was an English major (but I had passed Chem 1 with a perfect score, and ended up taking a ton of science classes just for fun).

Anyway, long story short, in our first exam the highest score was a 50, which was my own.

My solution to this problem was Khan Academy.com. I went through the Chemistry tutorials on my own and ended up becoming such a huge expert in the material I got an A at the conclusion of the course. No thanks to that SOB though.


13 posted on 05/07/2020 12:20:23 AM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: oldvirginian

“He said the on-line courses are more demanding because they require the student to do more actual reading and little to no lectures.”
*****

I already have 32 credits on my B school and most of it is online, and at Stanford they’ve had the online classes for 10 years plus. Why is this so hard to comprehend? . If you have a question, send an email. You are forced (just like high school etc) to use your brain and think it over.

“Also no parties and hanging out in overpriced bistros.”

Heck, I mostly hung out at the frat house. It’s part of life. Even military schools have hangouts to lighten the stress. C’mon..


14 posted on 05/07/2020 12:20:47 AM PDT by max americana (Intentionally fired leftards at work at every election since 2008 because I enjoy seeing them cry)
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

My statistics teacher was the same way.

He would write the question the board and then he’d write the answer, but no steps. We were left to work out the steps on our own
.


15 posted on 05/07/2020 12:26:25 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death by cultsther)
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To: Telepathic Intruder

The community college I was going to, College of DuPage, was having funds embezzled in very large amounts. It is stupidly expensive to go there depending on what you want to do, which was nursing in my case.

The admin is also crappy when it comes to dealing with students who have disabilities. Right before I started dialysis, I had to drop a whole bunch of classes, for which they kept all of the money despite the fact that I was one month into the semester, and they put me on Academic Probation II. I have to seek permission from the school to register for classes now, on top of needing to register IN PERSON, and the Dean refused to work with me the last time I saw one. Staff has changed since, and considering all of this COVID business, I might be able to find a way to register and do classes online.

Now that I’m no longer on dialysis, there’s no more concern about having to drop courses.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-college-of-dupage-investigation-20180424-storygallery.html

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/95-million-in-hidden-spending-revealed-at-college-of-dupage/

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/19/illinoiss-college-dupage-courts-controversy-once-again

Those last two are the big ones.


16 posted on 05/07/2020 1:01:04 AM PDT by Tacrolimus1mg (Do no harm, but take no sh!t.)
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

I think a Facebook-like forum, of fellow student, a video series of the class, produced by some star teacher, a Khan Academy of your subject, and a textbook and am intensive tests that can be taken, into you get it, would do a lot to replace our current university system.


17 posted on 05/07/2020 1:10:41 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death by cultsther)
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To: CheshireTheCat

I have two daughters. One thrives with online classes, one not so much. When you make your schedule you choose online or in-person. I understand this wasn’t planned for but some students are probably really struggling. Some just aren’t doing the work. Either way, it’s not what they paid for and no college would let them choose to change format mid-term. Some are paying $50,000 in tuition alone.


18 posted on 05/07/2020 2:27:30 AM PDT by MacMattico
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To: CheshireTheCat

Anyone paying 50,000 per year for the whole college experience is getting ripped off with online schooling.


19 posted on 05/07/2020 3:33:58 AM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (Trump is solving the world's problems only to distract us from Russia.)
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To: oldvirginian

Your boss’s master’s program is becoming the rule for many mid-career professionals. I did something like it when it was still classroom-bound in the late 80s. Nominally “Computer Systems Management” it was the most writing I had EVER done in school up to that point.

More recently I did a fully on-line JD program. Such are unaccredited at present but I was able to get a California Bar license, passing on first attempt. Not only was there extensive (sometimes seemingly impossible) work required outside the “classroom” we were also fully Socratic, called on frequently in classes that averaged perhaps 7 or 8 students. One day these programs will gain wider acceptance and accreditation.


20 posted on 05/07/2020 3:40:15 AM PDT by jimfree (My19 y/o granddaughter continues to have more quality exec experience than an 8 year Obama.)
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