LETTER: O-R editorial on students’ lawsuit off base

I have to disagree with the Observer Reporter’s opinion of student lawsuits against universities. It was a huge mistake to conclude that students are merely paying for credits toward graduation. A college degree should not be rubber stamped. When you attend college, you’re paying for knowledge, skills, and professional connections. At the most basic level, you’re paying for competence, and for many students, a great deal of that is developed in a physical environment under the supervision of established and experienced professionals.
It’s a terrible misconception that college courses, especially those in the sciences, can be effectively taught in a classroom, let alone online. In many cases, laboratory and field settings are not only crucial for skill development, they are, in fact, the only components of a given course. I have little doubt that a majority of university faculty would agree on their importance.
In any other circumstance, if a company charges you for a service, fails to provide that service as agreed upon, and then keeps the money, that’s fraud.
While universities were certainly in an unenviable position when responding to the pandemic, that’s no excuse for the financial beds they must now lie in, for which students are by no means responsible.
So what does this mean for universities? It had better mean reform. Tuition and salaries need to be capped. Universities should take a machete to their webs of bureaucracy, and stop wasting money on everything from redundant administration to unnecessary construction projects and a ton of other garbage completely unrelated to education. If they don’t, they need to be allowed to fail and replaced by institutions that do. Students might lose in the short term, but that would be utterly dwarfed by the long-term gain for society.
Eric Poundstone
Scottdale