LETTER: Bottom-up tuition gripe
To the editor:
As I was fuming about the issue of bottom-up tuition, the extra $800 I am going to spend, and just about to whip up a nice letter to the editor about it, I happened to notice the article by Josh Schultz. I appreciated that someone else has already noticed the problem and trying to do something about it. My main problem is that Spring will be my final semester. I’m assuming that I will just have to take it in the pocket book and live with it. The biggest problem with it is that I don’t understand what the problem is. I asked my advisor and the extension registration office, so far the best explanation I have received is, more or less, “It’s different than normal classes, they are funded differently.” Well from my perspective that difference is transparent. The only thing I think I will notice different is that there will be a camera in my classroom that is on, and every once in a while someone that I can’t see will ask a question. I am still in a classroom here on campus, I will have an instructor that I’ve had before, etc. What is the difference, why is that difference necessary, and why is it costing me so much?
My second concern is about how it seems classes offered on campus are constantly decreasing, while there are more and more distance ed classes. This is what is forcing me to take these distance ed classes. I moved up here to Logan to live and attend a university on campus, paying the additional fees for the services that campus can provide, yet I’m the one affected by this problem even though I’m not even touching the services that distance ed provides. I’m attending class just as I always have, nothing has changed, except that I’m being charged significantly more. But I guess that I’m too late. Nothing can be done by the time I leave. My only consolation will be when the alumni association starts spamming me with phone calls and junk mail, I can confidently throw out/hang up on any attempt to extort more money from me and not feel guilty about it. I hope in the future some progress will be made and future students won’t leave this school feeling cheated like I will.
Scott Nielsen