Columnist David Holman discusses how every cancelled class translates into lost tuition money for students.
Last month’s campus-wide power outage marks the fourth consecutive year that Ohio University has experienced a major cancellation in classes. This year’s cancelling of classes follows a string of snow days in the previous two academic years along with a call to suspend classes after an off-campus armed robbery in January of 2013. The near-three hour power outage cost students at least $190,000 in lost tuition, when calculating tuition from the university’s course offerings webpage for an in-state student taking 15 credit hours.
With cancelled classes becoming a norm for students, it is appropriate to talk about the responsibilities students have when their classes are cancelled excessively. To be clear, there are certain times when class cancellations are warranted, and an electrical power outage is one of those times. Inclement weather and dangerous situations that jeopardize the safety of faculty and students are also times when class cancellations should be considered. For professors, academic matters, such as scholastic conferences in their fields, or family emergencies are times when class cancellations are warranted. However, on a case-by-case basis, when a professor cancels enough classes to disrupt the pace of a semester-long course, students should be concerned.
For in-state students taking 15 credit hours at OU, a single class cancellation on a M/W/F three credit hour class costs the student roughly $23 when tuition is broken down by class meeting time. For a three credit hour T/TH class, the student’s accounting loss is approximately $35. Data on student loss from class cancellations is limited, but using OU’s 2015-16 upperclassmen tuition as a fixed rate, if a student takes five classes each semester over four years and has each class cancelled twice over its 15-week period, the student’s accounting loss is over $2,300 throughout the four years.
More often than not, students enjoy class cancellations on the margin, and even demand class cancellations on rare occasions. Amidst the protests on the University of Missouri’s campus last month, a professor took some heat for not cancelling an exam on a day when anonymous death threats were alleged to be carried out. Despite the university acknowledging the threats and pursuing them without cancelling classes, students were outraged when Missouri professor Dale Brigham emailed his class announcing the exam would be given as planned. The Washington Post reported the person responsible for posting the threat was arrested and no acts of violence occurred at Missouri’s campus on the day the threat was to be carried out.
Other than higher education, it is hard to find an example where a consumer often prefers to be shortchanged. In 2014, students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign targeted their chancellor, Phyllis Wise, with racist and sexist remarks on social media for choosing not to cancel classes after a heavy snow storm. Some schools, like the University of Michigan, historically operate at all costs to have classes as scheduled. From 1979 to 2013, Michigan did not have one university-wide class cancellation attributed to inclement weather.
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Though students initially appreciate class cancellations on the margin, there is a breaking point where they start to feel like they’re getting ripped off. Students at Florida Gulf Coast University identified with this after an incident in fall of 2014. The Naples Daily News reported that the professor’s electronic card key to the classroom was not reliable and on many occasions class was cancelled strictly because the professor could not get into the classroom. After the building’s technology staff neglected to fix the issue, the professor cancelled the remainder of classes and promised to award all students A’s. Cancelling classes is one thing, but issuing students A’s as a result is a greater deprivation of education.
For a vast majority of students, cancelled classes are considered a blessing. For some students, it is a time to catch up on school work. For other students, it allows them a chance to catch up on their favorite TV series on Netflix. And for OU students, it often leads to a “(insert reason for class cancellation) Fest” being declared. Time away from classes is not necessarily a bad thing, but it should be moderated, especially when that lost time from class translates into a large tuition loss for students.
David Holman is a senior majoring in media arts and studies and a research assistant at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Columns will be written by a different CCAP student from Ohio University each week. Email David at dh936611@ohio.edu.
