Students will be able to take a lot more online courses at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee this fall. But they will pay more for the privilege, according to an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The university will charge as much as $275 per course on top of regular tuition.
The university now is offering 90 more online classes than it did last fall, for a total of 366 online courses, the newspaper says. It also reported complaints from one student about the extra fee for an online class, because he did not feel he had the resources to wait a year for that class to be offered on campus again.
But the newspaper quoted the university's provost, Rita Cheng, as justifying the fees by saying that students were paying for the convenience of taking classes early. “I don't see that as a penalty,” Ms. Cheng told the Journal-Sentinel. “I see it as an option students have if they want to speed up their graduation.” She pointed out that were the online courses unavailable, the student would have to wait a year for the on-campus course. In addition, students who take all their courses online do not pay the regular student fees for campus services. A number of students, however, take a mix of on-campus and online courses, so they get hit with both fees.
Online-course fees vary throughout the university, with $275 at the high end. And other campuses in the Wisconsin system, such as the Madison flagship, generally do not charge extra for online courses at all.
The newspaper reported that Milwaukee collected $7.8-million in tuition-and-fee revenue for online courses last academic year. University officials said they did not track the destination of this money precisely, but they were sure that most of it went back into online-course development and delivery.
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7 Responses to Students Will Pay Extra for Online Courses at U. of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
bertnb - July 28, 2009 at 7:52 am
This is nothing new to the University System. These convenience fees are very common. The reason? The fees themselves remain within the departments that created the courses.
Why is this news? The state legislature has slashed funding to the university system — going so far now as to cut the pay of its faculty — who already earn far below the national average.
This is not news, rather just a reflection of the sad economic reality that has been created in the Wisconsin System.
vincent878 - July 28, 2009 at 10:03 am
At $275, the top end of the fee structure is about equal (in nominal terms) to the amount of one semester’s in-state mid-70s UWM tuition. Just an observation but I can’t believe that everyone is inured to the price of such convenience.
bertw - July 28, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Seems like a great way to kill online education at UW-Milwaukee. In fact, other than a great short-term way to fleece students for whom on-campus courses are not an option, I can’t think of another reason for tacking $275 on top of tuition and other fees. Technology fees are common elsewhere, but are nowhere as burdensome as $275, per course.
This sounds like either poor planning or a cynical assault.
11272784 - July 29, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Unless they can justify the extra cost, charging this is unethical. Chances are they’re doing it JUST to deter campus students from signing up for the online version and reducing head counts in class.
sblackmun - July 29, 2009 at 9:30 pm
This is crazy. Online courses save money for colleges. I hope students will punish UW-Milwaukee for this attempt at exploitation.
amoret68 - August 1, 2009 at 8:51 am
@sblackmun: Online courses do not always save money for colleges.
There are additional costs associated with the development of online courses that do not exist in the traditional classroom–chief among them faculty training and development.
To ensure quality, my school sets lower enrollment caps for online courses than their in-person counterparts. This means that we receive less revenue for every online course we run. While we don’t currently charge a fee (and would never charge $275 per class), doing so would help us recoup some of those losses.
truescholar601 - August 11, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Sounds like University of Wisconsin @ Milwaukee has gone for-profit.