Monday, September 10, 2001

Should Distance Students Pay for Campus-Based Services? By DAN CARNEVALE Atlanta Aimee Coughlin enjoyed the convenience of earning her bachelor's degree online. But it cost a little more than she would have liked. She was living in Alabama at the time, finishing her applied-science degree in dental hygiene from Clayton College & State University in Morrow, Ga., 15 miles south of Atlanta. Although she never went to any of the basketball games or parked on campus, she paid hundreds of dollars in fees to support those and other student services. "Of course I wasn't real happy about that, because of course I didn't use any of it," Ms. Coughlin says. Ms. Coughlin's 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 have no use for -- fees for offerings like athletics, student organizations, and day care. College administrators admit that this isn't fair, but they say that solving the problem isn't easy, either. Students who live on campus and students who live a hundred miles away often take the same online courses together, and trying to decide who should pay what -- and why -- can be a lengthy and fractious process. Meanwhile, existing fee policies can be cumbersome and confusing to online students, who may not find out how they are affected until it's too late. Student-fee structures have always been unfair to some degree -- not every traditional undergraduate gets sick enough to visit the student-health service, for instance, and some students may use a fee-supported campus bus service daily while classmates who have paid the same fee choose to bike to and fro. But when online students live hundreds of miles away, paying fees for campus services can become a source of more serious discontent. Observers predict that as online education grows, online students are going to become more picky about what they pay for. And some say that fees for online students will end up being determined largely by what an increasingly competitive online market will bear. The problem of student fees is one of the many issues that have crept up on administrators since the explosion of online education began. Some institutions have already changed their fee policies to accommodate online students, while others -- like the University System of Georgia, of which Clayton State is part -- are now 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 students are taking courses from the university's extension program, which decides its own fees. The University of Wisconsin System, meanwhile, changed its fee policy in 1999, lumping campus fees into a category called "segregated fees." Distance students don't have to pay them. But it's up to the system's individual institutions to adopt the segregated-fee structure, and not all of them have, says Freda Harris, assistant vice president for budget and planning at the Wisconsin system. Online students still have to pay the fees if they take courses through institutions 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. Some institutions waive some fees for online students, but keep others. The University of Connecticut College of Continuing Education, for instance, doesn't charge off-campus students the $15 transit fee for the bus system, says Judy Buffolino, director of distance education there. But all students, on or off campus, have to pay for the campus-infrastructure fee, which runs $33 for up to five credits and $65 from 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 those fees were waived for all students taking online courses, the institution would lose about $195,000 in income. Meanwhile, administrators say many of their online students live right in the residence halls and are regular users of the services the student fees pay for. Those students take some of their courses online because doing so is more convenient for them. Janis H. Bruwelheide, director of a federally financed project at the University of Montana at Bozeman called Borderless Access to Training and Education, has been collecting information on distance-education programs and the fees they charge, and has found no real pattern. "It's all over the map," she says. "I think a lot of institutions just haven't thought about it yet." But some institutions are making a good-faith effort to make their fee structures fairer for distance students, says Bruce Chaloux, director of the Southern Regional Education Board's Electronic Campus. "Clearly, the trend is to unbundle the fee structure to make it more appropriate to the students that are not on campus," Mr. Chaloux says. He adds, however, that "the real challenge becomes if you have a student on campus who's taking all of his courses through an e-learning mode." That dilemma makes it difficult for institutions like Clayton State and Western Washington University from to remove all on-campus student fees for online students, says Meredith Gilbert, assistant director for distributed learning at Western Washington. Online courses that are not part of her institution's extension program are part of the regular curriculum, and are taken by students both on and off the campus, in Bellingham. "The regular program on campus offers a whole schedule of classes -- some of those classes are online," Ms. Gilbert says. "Anything you take through the regular class schedule, then all the fees kick in." The University System of Georgia has a policy of charging most undergraduate students the same tuition and fees, regardless of where they take a course. "We charge mandatory fees for any student," says William Bowes, vice chancellor of fiscal affairs for the system. "That's what the policy is." System officials acknowledge that this approach is unfair for those students who never visit campus. "If I'm a total off-site student, there's no way I'm going to take advantage of those services," Mr. Bowes says. Ms. Coughlin had already received her associate degree from Clayton State in 1990, through traditional courses. Since sticking with the same college seemed the most convenient route for her, she says 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, Ms. Coughlin approached the Clayton officials about the fees to see if she could get a refund. They returned some of the money -- including $300 for a 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 have to go through the same hassle that Ms. Coughlin went through. A pilot program called eCore debuted in fall of 2000 to attract more students to undergraduate programs. Under eCore, a student can enroll at one of five institutions, take a block of 14 online courses, and then transfer the credits to any undergraduate institution in the Georgia system. These courses represent the first two years of the student's college career. To entice students to join the eCore program, fees for those 14 courses are waived. Tuition is set at $100 per credit hour -- slightly higher than tuition for a typical course, but without the fees, the students usually save money. "The concept was that eCore could provide a model policy for distance-education tuition and fees," Mr. Bowes says. Of the hundreds of online courses the Georgia system offers, the 14 eCore courses are a tiny fraction. But since these courses are the basics of an undergraduate degree, Georgia officials expect eCore to be popular. System officials say they will begin reviewing the program after they have accumulated a couple of years' worth of data. Then they will decide whether a flat-rate, no-fee policy can be used for all online courses. The eCore program isn't the only exception to the Georgia system's standard fee structure. For example, fees are waived for students who take courses at off-campus centers and in special workshops. Students who take graduate-level courses online also don't have to pay on-campus fees. Mr. Bowes says there will always be administrative difficulties, no matter what an institution's policy says. "There will be loopholes in the policy," he says. "There could be distance students who want to avail themselves to these services." Even when some student fees are waived for online courses, other fees can creep in. The University of Houston waives some fees for students who are completely off-campus. Online students don't have to pay for the university-center fee, for instance, and they pay half of the student-services fee, saving $75 each, says Marshall Schott, director of educational technology and outreach for the university's Cinco Ranch campus. But the students are charged an additional $140 for each online course they take, up to two courses per semester. University administrators say they're charging students for both the convenience of taking online courses and for 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 says, because the money is usually going toward programs and services that they use. In the end, they get what they pay for, he says. What's going to dictate the cost of fees will be market demands, says Rick Skinner, president of the University of Georgia distance-learning program, called the Georgia Global Learning Online for Business and Education. But what that market is and how it will change is still up in the air, he says. "Nobody knows what the price sensitivity is." When shopping for an online program, he says, the factors students consider -- in no particular order -- are access, convenience, cost, and quality. "If you give them convenience, they seem to want to pay some sort of a premium for that," Mr. Skinner says. But that may change in the future, he says, as students have more options and start comparison shopping. "Especially ... the nontraditional student -- I don't think we should ever underestimate them," Mr. Skinner says. "These are pretty savvy retail customers." Even so, the fee structures at many institutions are often confusing. Students may not be able to discern what they will pay until they get their bills. At the University of Oregon, whether online students pay on-campus fees depends on the courses they take and the programs they are in, says Curt Lind, director of continuing education at the university. Some of the 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. Ginger Maring, a freshman online student at the State University of West Georgia, 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 were waived. When listing what she looked for in an online program, price was the first thing she mentioned, followed by accreditation. It was important to her that she not have to pay any fees for on-campus student services. "That was a big factor with me," Ms. Maring says. "I'm not even stepping foot on that campus. Why would I pay for any of that?" Each campus of the Georgia system has a committee, with at least half of its members being students, to review proposed fees, Mr. Bowes says. Although committee approval isn't required for the imposition of fees, students have a voice in the process. But no online students are on any of those committees, 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-mails demanding that on-campus fees be removed. Indeed, she's hoping that all 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." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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