A Kelley School of Business student launched a petition to persuade Indiana University to reduce tuition rate after many classes moved online during the coronavirus pandemic.
Rebecca Chitlik’s change.org petition gathered over 2,500 signatures since it went online July 16th.
“Indiana University and many other universities, across the state, country and world, need to start seeing their students as the future and not just their paycheck,” said Chitlik, a junior from San Diego.
She is among the 25 percent of students who are taking all their classes online this fall, but the San Diego native is paying out of state tuition.
“That is one of the more challenging parts of it all, is not having that interaction not just with your peers but your professors,” she said.
But Indiana University officials appear not to be budging on the issue.Now that students have been fully e-learning since the spring semester, professors have had time to adjust officials say.
Kirk White, who heads IU’s COVID-19 response says IU education majors are one group that’s benefited tremendously from e-learning.
“What they learned was, how to do online instruction for their classes, while they were still IU students,” White said during a conference call July 31st.
IU Spokesperson Chuck Carney says Kelley School’s I-Core module has been rated as one of the best online courses in the country and professors in all colleges campus wide are equipped to effectively instruct their students from behind a computer screen.
“The keep teaching.iu.edu was established a decade ago for a pandemic that we expected might happen then, so we’ve been preparing for this for some time,” Carney said.
But Chitlik, who is also a teaching assistant, says even the best and brightest professors can’t effectively teach when they aren’t in the classroom.
“The class I’m TA’ing for is a discussion-based class, but it’s going to be held online, so whether it’s going to be a discussion or a lecture it’s going to be very difficult to get student engagement.”
So far American University, and Catholic University, both located in Washington D.C,are the only major institutions of higher learning that reduced tuition for students while they are taking classes online because of the pandemic.
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