North Texas Daily

Outrage on social media has been a focal point lately as many students are shocked to see that UNT will most likely not reduce tuition or fees for the upcoming school year, despite the financial hardships and learning struggles many will face in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. With classes starting in a little over a month, it is imperative that the administration does something, anything, as students and families are starting to question the cost of high tuition and the benefits received from online teaching due to the pandemic.

UNT plans to have roughly half of the 12,000 courses offered face-to-face, with the other half offered in various online formats. Many students will have their entire course load online or remote, rather than in-person, and it is unlikely the majority of students will have a full course-load face-to-face, but everyone will still have to pay full tuition and student fees?

Yes, according to a tweet from the UNTsocial Twitter account, expect to pay full-price tuition for UNT this fall despite the possibility of not being on-campus or having full access to student services paid for by our student fees. As the administration has decided not to restructure tuition and fees paid by the students.

Now there is an argument to make that the amount of work and cost required from professors to make a class fully remote would justify not reducing tuition, but universities like Hampton are not only planning to go fully online but are also reducing tuition by at least 15 percent. Williams College followed suit as well. In doing this, Hampton is protecting both the wallets (somewhat) and the lives of their student body. 

UNT, in contrast, expects their incoming freshman class to live in the dorms, attend in-person classes during a pandemic and pay full-price housing and tuition before promptly kicking them all out after the Thanksgiving break when the university plans to go fully online. And it is absurd and dangerously naive of the administration of UNT to believe that they can protect their students from a highly infectious and deadly virus while at the same time expecting them to pay student fees for resources that will become less accessible or unavailable altogether. 

To expect students to risk infection to live on-campus and for the rest to pay full-price tuition and fees for services that they don’t have access to is disgraceful, and the students of UNT deserve better than what we have. Students should not have to front the burden of services many won’t see the benefit of, and the bungling of communicating this tuition fiasco should be an indicator of how UNT is going to handle in-person attendance in the fall.

Featured Illustration: Olivia Varnell