 should college tuition be lowered if classes are being held online? According to 93% of students, it should. According to a survey by an online study guide platform, one class more than 93% of students think that if colleges aren't spending as much in order to, you know, provide online classes that the students shouldn't be paying as much or if they are paying that much, they should be getting a refund. Now, on top of that, you might think that tuition has been halted, right? You might think that there's no way that they increase tuition when all of these classes are being held online. Very few schools have actually frozen or halted tuition and it still has risen on average about 1 to 2%, which is a little bit lower than the usual 3%. That's right, tuition has historically risen about 3% per year and in the last few years or so, it's only risen about 1 to 2% depending on whether you are attending a private college or a state college. Now, one class also found that about 75% of students were unhappy with the quality of the online courses and that totally makes sense, right? These universities are probably doing online courses for the first time, at least widespread and so the online courses probably aren't all that good. And because of that, about 35% of students have considered withdrawing from school. Now, I asked my personal YouTube audience, you guys, whether you would rather attend classes online or in person and overwhelmingly people would rather attend classes in person. Only about 22% of people said that they wanted to attend classes online. However, there were a few comments that said that it would be ideal if you attended some classes online and some classes in person, but mostly in person. Now, keep in mind that my audience is only about 7% extroverted, right? So the vast majority of my audience is introverted and they would still rather attend classes in person. So if you were to survey the general population, I'm sure that would be even worse. So I can definitely see why people are very angry about this. And let's kind of go over some of the pros and cons of online college versus attending a brick and mortar university in person. So one thing that I've talked about before and I've actually compared this in several different videos was the cost of college in other countries versus the cost of college in the United States of America. Now, I'm not going to go over the entire video, but I'll just kind of, you know, leave something on the screen really quick. The best college in Europe, for instance, or one of the best colleges, University of Cambridge is about 9,250 Great Britain pounds, which is about $12,800 here in the United States. Whereas if you compare that to Harvard University, the tuition there yearly, 51,000 Stanford, it's 53,000. So why is it four and a half times more expensive to go to an elite college here in the United States versus an elite college in Europe? And again, I went over in much more detail in that other video. I know this is kind of an extreme example, but usually it's much more expensive at the very least two to three times more to go to college here in the US versus another country. Is the education you get all that much better? Probably not. Do you end up making a lot more money on average? No, it's also been shown that people who graduate from state schools, for instance, just like a normal school, make pretty much about the same as people who graduate from Ivy Leagues, especially when you consider the fact that Ivy Leagues are so much more expensive and more difficult to get into. And I bull it all down in those other videos, but really the two things that you can come up with that are really the only legitimate arguments that you can have to argue that, hey, you know, this isn't a scam, like it's actually worth that much is two things, right? First of all, the fact that you have that college experience and then the fact that you get to be able to network, right? So that's the real reason why they are able to charge that much. You know, it's kind of like that brand name, you know, Harvard, Stanford, they have a very expensive brand name, even other universities that aren't as prestigious, they still have that brand name recognition. There's a certain image that people have in their brain of being able to attend Stanford, for instance, and then also the ability to be able to network with people while you're there. And unfortunately, both of these things are almost completely taken away with online classes. It's very difficult for you to network online. And on top of that, you are not getting that college experience that everybody wants to have. And the college experience truly is a unique thing. And I feel really bad for the students who are having to go to college right now because they aren't going to get to experience that. So we've established two things here. One, students are very unhappy with online classes. They don't like it. Two, you aren't getting nearly as much value out of online classes. And then the third thing that we're going to touch on now is how much is this actually costing universities, right? Are the universities costs going down because of the fact that most of these classes are online? And if the costs are going down, how in the world are these universities justifying increasing the tuition? Well, this part is a little bit more controversial. And you have some pretty decent arguments on either side. So on one side, you have the argument of, hey, you know, if they're not attending classes in person, that means all these buildings don't necessarily have to be open. They don't have to be staffed. And so therefore, the operating costs should go down. On the other hand, you have the argument of they're trying to retain their employees because they're hoping that things are going to open back soon. And so even though these people might not be doing the normal work, they didn't get fired in many cases. And then there's also arguments that the extra resources that they had to dedicate in order to pivot very quickly over to online classes cost quite a bit as well. I'm not so sure that I buy that argument, though. I think overwhelmingly colleges that operate online don't have to spend nearly as much as brick and mortar universities. I mean, all you have to do is look at the Harvard endowment, right? And that's essentially just a very fancy word for hedge fund. Harvard runs an endowment where they invest all the money that they get from students tuition, as well as donations from former students. And Harvard's endowment is $40 billion. And it's been estimated that Harvard's endowment could actually pay for the cost of tuition for all of their students for the next 40 years. And that's if they weren't collecting tuition at all, and it would also pay for the operating costs of the university. So clearly, no matter what way they want to frame it, this is a university that is basically operating as a business and they are making a ridiculous amount of money. Now, I know this is an outlier example, but many other endowments from different universities show the same thing. Universities are making a ridiculous amount of money every single year. They are operating at a net positive. And this is despite the fact that many of them are nonprofits. So the truth is here, most universities would have no difficulty at all cutting the cost of tuition down or giving their students a refund if they really wanted to. Because at the end of the day, what truly matters is the value that you are giving your students. That's what businesses and education etc. is supposed to be all about. How much value are you giving? And I've shown in this video very clearly that they are giving way less value than they used to. And so therefore, I think it would be appropriate to at the very least freeze all the tuition costs. Do not increase the cost of tuition. And honestly, they should probably slash it temporarily or give people a refund. That's just my opinion though. Let me know what you think down in the comments below. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you. And then go ahead, gently tap that like button and hit the subscribe button so you never miss out.