What is happening with Coronavirus and Tuition Fees?
I think the short answer to what is happening with coronavirus, university tuition fees and lectures is nobody really knows! I would treat with great scepticism anyone that tells you they know what will be happening and their University will be returning for the first semester in October and there will be no problems! Universities will want their tuition fees.
Now, I don’t want to say they’re lying but they are probably doing a very good impression of the village idiot. Five months ago no one would have predicted the mess we’re in today so how on earth can they predict what might be happening in five months time. So, if they tell you just to pay your tuition fees because in October lectures and tutorials will be back on as normal, everyone can come to campus, they are clearly mad!
So what do we know?
Well, Coronavirus in the form of COVID-19 is here to stay. There might be a vaccine, there might not be a vaccine – we don’t know. But we do know it will take at least year, if it happens at all.
As long as we have Coronavirus we will have social distancing, and that is really difficult in university lectures and tutorials.
University tuition fees matter to a lot of western commercial universities, and they are seriously worried about their customers (used to be called students) disappearing overnight.
So, due to Coronavirus, it will not be business as usual in October; but universities will want their tuition fees, of that we can be sure.
What is happening?
Universities are good at pretending and planning, often pretending to plan too… So there will be a lot people talking about ‘blended learning’, ‘virtual classrooms’, ‘hybrid tutorials’ and some people who have just awoken to old technology will talk about ‘podcasting’ and it is all on line now anyway. Do not let them away with anything that is not interactive! Make sure you get your hours, get what your tuition fees are paying for.
I will explore some more of these suggestions for lectures in future posts. However, my advice would be pay nothing towards tuition fees, agree to nothing, sign up to nothing… pause and take a deep breath. Give it a few months and see what happens. The good universities will come up with a plan for lectures and tutorials during Coronavirus, and it might even be workable.
Going Forward
What ever happens, it will not be a traditional university experience. Do you really need to go this October? You probably don’t! Why not wait a year and see what happens…
Meanwhile, if any university says to you ‘We know what is happening in October’… Smile, raise an eyebrow, turn away quickly and look elsewhere.