In an email sent out by West Virginia University on Monday, March 18, 2019, the university stated that they plan to implement a new fee of $25 per credit hour for online courses offered by the university, effective in the fall 2019 semester.
This fee would be applied for all sessions moving forward from the fall 2019 semester. Also, the fee would be capped at $75 per online course with the purpose to grant access to off-campus students and support services that only on-campus students have had access to previously.
These services would include an online tutoring and proctoring center, an online Writing Center and providing student family support. The fees would also go towards offering a larger variety of online courses.
Information provided by the WVU website revealed that this fee would not be applied to high school access courses, study abroad courses, summer graduate remedial medicine courses, professional development and other tuition-waived courses. If applied, however, the fee is not available to be waived.
“It doesn’t [a]ffect me too much except for next semester, but [I] feel bad for the people who are in programs that are mostly online or completely online,” said Kenzie Bostik, a junior strategic communications major from Charleston, West Virginia. “It’s just $75, but that adds up, especially since WVU already raised tuition and fees recently.”
Bostik adds that the fee seems unnecessary for students to be charged because it appears as though they aren’t actually gaining anything.
Many students take online courses for a variety of reasons, whether for time convenience, the ability to earn money while earning your degree or the ability to take courses in the summer to “get ahead.” This is already a challenge students face at WVU, where the courses cost $300 per credit hour to take over the summer, and now will have an additional fee of $25 per credit hour that will only push students to find courses to take elsewhere and transfer the credit there.
Bostik also expressed her discontent with the WVU when she tweeted on Monday, March 18, 2019, that “the one semester I schedule mostly online classes WVU decides to add a $75 ‘support fee’ per class smh.”
While this fee would allow the off-campus students a range of services, it would also increase the total price they are paying, which may have been why they decided against living on-campus.