The University of Toronto has suffered criticism of its move to introduce so-called "flat tuition fees," fees charged per semester rather than per course. As coverage in University Affairs demonstrates, the practice is common throughout Ontario, so why is this story generating controversy? I think it is related to a wrong-headed defense of the working student: not people with careers who attend university part-time, but full-time students who edge closer and closer to concurrent, full-time work.
Just to be clear: if a student wants to attend the UofT on a part-time basis, that student still pays just for each course. Students who want to take three or four or five courses, however, all pay the same amount. There are many advantages to this approach, not the least of which is that students now get real encouragement to take a full course load and finish their degrees in four years, and not five or six or seven or more. Thus, it is quite likely that students will, over the course of their university careers, pay far less in compulsory charges and rent. But, if done properly, the amount of tuition paid through eight semesters of "flat fees" should also be less than if paid by the course.
Imagine, for argument's sake, that a course at university now costs $500. A student doing five courses pays $2,500; a student doing three courses pays $1,500. Let's speculate that the average course load for all students is 4.3 courses: many do five, but many others do four or three. The average student load thus generates $2,150 in tuition each term for the university. Over forty courses in an undergraduate degree, each student pays $20,000. Proceeding from the average load of 4.3 courses, let us now allow the institution to charge for 4.5 courses: everyone pays $2,250 per term of undergraduate study. The institution receives, on average, an extra $100 per student each semester, and that money is welcome in these tough times. But the student who was already doing a full course load pays $250 less, and that could be a month's rent if four people are sharing. If a student was used to doing four courses, bumping up to a fifth course is accomplished at half-price for that extra course.
A university might argue that, eventually, everyone has to do at least forty courses, and so they lose out by introducing what amounts to a tuition cut. No so. As the UofT has argued, there is considerable administrative cost in charging fees and doling out refunds on a sliding scale, and that cost could be eliminated. The extra enrollments, if handled properly, could be absorbed into existing classes. I am not talking about expanding that 80-seat class to 120; rather, I mean that enrollment management could help ensure that every class offered is at least 85 percent filled. Right now, with great uncertainty about how many classes students in our programs will take each semester, there are many classes scheduled that launch though they are only half-full. Small class sizes represent an admirable goal, but they should be small by design, not small because the people we expected to show up, the people who were scheduled to do a course by their program sequencing plans, decided to cut back to three courses. Eventually, of course, we have to put on another section for those people, leading to a lot of inefficiency in the system.
But the real mutual benefit exists in retention. Universities lose out on tuition, in the long run, because some of these "part-time, full-time" students fail to complete their degrees. Drop-out rates are complex things, and people leave without their degrees for a variety of reasons. But the longer it takes for someone to finish, the more chance there is that whatever force claims unsuccessful students, from money problems to family issues to waning interest, has more of an opportunity to claim them. Helping focus students' attention, giving them the best plan for their success, is simply the right thing to do.
There are excellent reasons for some people to do less than a full course load. Our learning strategists each year recommend a reduced course load for a variety of people, students with exceptional family responsibilities, students with disabilities. There could surely be some exception made here, still, moving forward. But the outcry from Ontario is really about the person working thirty hours a week who wants to take only three or four courses. As sympathetic as I am about student finances, we cannot design a system that condones this practice. I have written before in this space that our system of loans and grants is wrongheaded. Governments in Canada and the United States have thrown at banks and automakers enough money over the past eighteen months to educate a generation of young people. Money is still tight for students. But the fact remains that having ones mind half on school and half on work is no way to get an education. University was intended, and must still be moving forward, a full-time endeavor for most people. Students need the ability to leave class and think about what they have heard and what they have said, not leave class and think about what size shoe the lady just requested from the stockroom. We do everyone involved a disservice by believing that students can work full-time and study full-time and do an adequate job at either thing. There is a role for genuine part-time study, just as there is a role for genuine part-time work.
We must do more to ensure that people can afford to go to school and get enough out of the experience to justify the sacrifices they make. Legislators who fret about the quality of a university education should consider how what compromises they have enabled outside the walls of academe have contributed to the diminishing of the educational experience. And let us hope that they do not cave in to the pressure of short-sighted individuals who oppose structural changes meant, ultimately, to protect the integrity of universities themselves.
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