re: Lawsuit for tuition/fee reimbursement. It will not be the last...

My sister's in OT school and had paid $20K+ for this semester. They've gone to online schooling for the rest of the foreseeable year but no tuition deduction has been discussed.

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Colleges definitely need to go online more

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100%. There is no reason that a freshman seminar class with 300 students needs to meet in person three times a week. Have the professor offer that shite online and have his office hours available through Skype for those classes. Reserve the in person classes for those that require physical presence (like labs and such) and classes taken after a major is declared where a back and forth between the students and the professors during class is desirable and encouraged.

When I talk about 300 kids sitting in a room staring at what's going on up front and not being allowed to talk, am I talking about a college class or have I just described a screening of "Frozen"? What works to deliver a Pixar movie will work to deliver a freshman seminar.

Plus, it opens up resources. The department can have multiple professors deliver the lectures and stream them to all sections at different times. A better approach would be on demand within a given window. So, for the Monday lecture, you have the 24 hours of Monday to watch the lecture as many times as you'd like. After that, it's no longer available. You'd have to put some restrictions like that to keep students engaged for the semester instead of trying to cram 30 hours of lectures 3 days before the final. The professor would be available by Skype during posted office hours, as usual. Instead of having 3 professors each teaching a section of a course with 3 meetings a week for 9 professor-hours devoted to lectures, you let the same three professors work as a team, each recording one lecture a week for a total of 3 professor-hours, freeing them up for other tasks, research, etc. There, I've just freed up 6 professor hours a week for your chemistry department for a massive increase in productivity. Now, give me a $500,000 a year job as a college administrator.

Of course, colleges will never do this. They've got to pay to maintain that giant auditorium and all those buildings whether or not they use them, so why would they ever willingly quit using them and justifying their "facilities fees"?

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If you think that the LSU online classes aren't as good as the LSU on-campus classes, then everything universities and our society have done for the last 10 years, working towards more remote higher education, would be completely overturned.

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College simply isn’t as good as it was fifty or sixty years ago. We’ve made education more accessible, and in the process we’ve watered it down.

I assume online education will just accelerate that trend.

With current technology, colleges may likely realize they don’t need to offer everything in class after this. We may see a shift to even more online classes in the future, with limited in-class instruction only geared towards things like labs—even that may be a stretch as you can already do lower level bio, chem, and physics online.

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Hopefully this shutdown weeds out the UNOs, Southerns, Xaviers, LSUSs, NSUs, Southeasterns of the world

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Hopefully it weeds out the stupid degrees, and wasteful money spent propping up stupid department heads to make students bow down to liberal agendas. I think there will be a need to have the smaller campuses as long as it's financially responsible and self supportive. This may finally remake the American college system to make it great again.

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Online is not the same and they are not delivering near the same product online.

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Not universally. And Universities have hand to hemorrhage money to make this conversion even possible and still meet accrediation standards (LSU must be paying proctorU millions of dollars and their IT and instructional design people are working massive OT surely). You could argue you should be paying more.

Academic Excellence Fee
These funds are used to promote academic excellence by enhancing instructional programs.

Operational Fee
During the 2004 Regular Session, the Louisiana Legislature passed House Bill 1062 authorizing the LSU Board of Supervisors to assess an operational fee of up to 4 percent of the total mandatory tuition and fees. The operational fee is used to cover state mandated costs and enhance instructional programs at the University.

Building Use Fee
This fee is used to help construct, acquire, repair, maintain, operate, or improve the facilities and physical infrastructure of the University. In the case of the Distance Learning Programs, the fee provides funding to maintain, operate, repair and improve the facilities and infrastructure used by our staff.

Student Excellence Fee
The purpose of this fee is to enhance the LSU student learning experience. The fee revenues are used to increase instructional and student support services as part of LSU’s graduation and retention efforts. The majority of the funds are allocated to academic colleges, with the remainder allocated to student support functions such as the Center for Academic Success, LSU Libraries, mental health counseling, and campus safety.

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Upperclassmen in liberal arts classes are missing out on the small discussion groups that are important components of some classes. 

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Liberal arts? You ain't missing out on anything with this bullshite sector. Whether online or in class. Either way it's a waste of time.

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They've gone to online schooling for the rest of the foreseeable year but no tuition deduction has been discussed.

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They're going to hoard their money no doubt. Can't really blame them either because they're all about to be in a crunch.