Tuition for online courses is more expensive than the tuition for the same courses taken on campus. A student’s bill will come out to about $320 per credit hour in the classroom and over $400 for an online course.
According to Tim Pinnow, acting assistant vice president for Academic Affairs and director of Distance Education, the main reason behind the unusual price difference is the extra software that it takes to run the course, as well as a team to run the software.
“You have to have people to support it, and you have to have a help desk to support it,” Pinnow said. “We have a staff of four instructional designers that work with the faculty to put up quality courses.”
Many online courses rely on programs as a working medium for the students. A few of these include but are not limited to, Panopto and VoiceThread. The tuition price gap was a result of the Board of Trustees realizing that on-campus students were being charged for things that they didn’t even use. Therefore, it only made sense to send different bills to the students of different class types depending on which resources they’d be using.
Online courses, however, do not come with student fees.
“Some fees are related to the campus,” Pinnow said. “Online, we don’t have to worry about maintenance in buildings. We don’t have to worry about custodial staff because online doesn’t require those things.”
This makes online and in-class tuition substantially different on the bill. On campus, the tuition plus the fees come out to approximately $320, but the online tuition alone, without the fees, is normally still a little more than $400.
There are desires to change the price gap, but according to Pinnow, the process to do so would be a long one.
“Is it possible? Yes, but it wouldn’t be quick if it did,” Pinnow said regarding the process. “The Faculty Senate is looking at a recommendation from a committee that suggested that we try and match [the costs].”
The recommendation will either be approved or denied by the Faculty Senate and if it’s approved, it’ll move forward. “If the Faculty Senate approves this recommendation, it’ll go to the Board of Trustees because the Board of Trustees are the people who ultimately have the power to set tuition,” Pinnow said.
Pinnow suspects that the Board of Trustees would ask for the school to do a study to see how many years it would take them to match up the tuition.
“It would not be a quick change, if it were to change,” Pinnow said.
