As the 2009 winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for the online Fiction Writing courses English 130 and English 206, I applaud your taking a firm stance against a tuition hike, but I am appalled that you mistakenly think online classes “have less educational value”. Nothing could be further from the truth. I challenge you to enroll in my class and find out for yourself. I will personally reimburse your tuition if find my classes lack full educational value. And if you realize they, in fact, are as rigorous as classes you take on campus – you can make a donation to a literacy organization of your choice.
I have taught in campus classrooms, and was reluctant to teach online, harboring the same mistaken prejudices you apparently hold. But I found that online classes – to my surprise – were actually far more engaging for many students than traditional classrooms, and the work equally rigorous. The online students in general tend to be more self-motivated, willingly invest extra time in their work, and unlike in a traditional classroom setting, where a few students can dominate the discussion and a core group sit quietly not participating, the online discussion forums have been stunningly effective, functioning as provocative, wide-ranging literary discussions you would expect to find in a Salon. My students have gone on to publish, to enroll in top 5 MFA programs, to teach in inner city school systems, to win national awards for their audio stories, to develop careers as editors, and one has had her plays produced in L.A. San Francisco, the Triangle and Cameron.
Again, I challenge you to enroll in my class. If you find it academically lacking, I will reimburse your tuition. But if you find it, as I’m sure you will, as educationally rigorous as similar campus courses, you can make a donation to a literacy organization.

Only two typos isn’t bad for the morning. That should be Cameroon – it wasn’t really produced ‘in’ a person named Cameron.
And obviously, it should read “if you find”.
But thanks, again, for writing about the tuition hike. In addition to traditional students, many online students are people who are working, single mothers, members of ethnic groups traditionally underpaid in this country. The hike will be hard on them. And it may hurt the instructors, who rely on enrollment for their courses to run. I’m a single father with two sons in the UNC system. So this hike affects me directly.

richard, you are a single (apparently talented, dedicated) professor, and it sounds like your students take the online version of your course by choice. but i am a math and statistics tutor, and have many students who take these classes online not by choice but by force of budget cuts, and see evidence every day of the fact that they are simply not grasping the material in the same way as others who attend in-person lectures.
perhaps it’s an issue of subject matter or teaching style, but i don’t think your experience can really be extrapolated to make a general statement about online learning in general.

As a young professional and UNC alum, I have taken 6 graduate courses from my alma mater in an online format, and “met” two of my all-time favorite professors in this way. Teachers who, when asked a question about a topic not directly pertaining to a lecture might spend hours of their own time researching material to give me a response. The truth is, it’s intimidating to ask the professor of a 200-person lecture to do a similar favor.
Your perspective is incorrect and narrow in scope when you state “many students choose online courses because a required course is not available to them on campus.” I simply do not have the time to enroll at a nearby college (not to mention, they couldn’t hold a candle to UNC) and commute after a 10-hour work day. Paying for an online course is paying for a convenience. To delve a little deeper I ask, what is it that makes you feel slighted by paying for an online learning experience from one of the best schools in the country? Are you not paying for the exposure to knowledge? Is this not exactly what a classroom experience is, minus the convenience of working on your own time? If you’ve ever taken an online course from UNC, you know there are teachers who obviously spend hours arranging lesson plans, presentations, case studies, and links to other websites willing to answer any question you may have, usually in under 24 hours via email. Phone numbers are always provided.
Claiming that online courses have “far less educational value” is empty, and not once justified in this article. I have taken some of the most difficult courses offered in an online format from physiology to biostatistics to epidemiology, and have retained comparable, if not more knowledge from difficult subjects taken in person. True, it can be hard to make up for the lack of face-to-face interaction, however the motivated learner (as most online course participants and most UNC students for that matter generally are) will find no problem in gaining a valuable educational experience. I agree with Richard in that most classroom discussions tend to be dominated by a handful of students, but the online format gives every student the opportunity to have a voice. I have found that having all the discussions documented is an invaluable learning tool, as they are available for reference at any time.
Like it or not, we live in a digital age, as a great portion of business is carried out through e-commerce and scientific collaboration takes place through email and web chat. Not to put down anyone’s learning style, but the aggressive learning approach one takes when enrolled in an online self-paced course of study is a skill that is crucial for success in the professional world. Isn’t that why we go to college? To learn about subjects we are interested in while preparing ourselves for a career?
I cannot generalize to all online programs, as I’m sure there are some shady ones out there. But that’s not what this is about. UNC is and should be held to a higher standard as one of the premier institutions in the world. For the most part, its online courses meet and exceed these standards, as UNC would not sponsor sub-par courses taught by apathetic teachers.
Raising tuition has never been a popular idea. At the end of the day, we can always complain about having to spend money; nobody wants to do it. However, I would much rather pay a little more money for access to a top-notch education and sacrifice a few luxuries than to not have that opportunity at all.

“They have far less educational value.” This is absolutely not the case! I took Physiology 202 and found it to be an extremely challenging course. Equivalent to ones have have taken in person during my undergrad. I have my BS in biology and am currently attending Veterinary School. The information I learned from the online course not only provided me with a great understanding of physiology, but I still refer to the notes on a regular basis. A tuition hike seems unnecessary because I paid more for this one class that I did for any other class taken throughout my undergrad.