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<\/a>Camosun vice president of education John Boraas confirms that courses are billed on a cost-per-hour basis, but he says that some courses have \u201cblended\u201d online components that make it hard to judge a course on a per-hour basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the challenge,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cThis is the case in all educational institutions. The billing is based on the approved hours by the educational senate or council, and then a determination is made as to how to deliver it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The college has courses that are delivered completely online; the tuition is the same for one of those as it is for the equivalent course delivered in person, despite having no classroom hours.<\/p>\n
But the courses Lee is concerned about\u2014Finance 210, Business 140, and Accounting 111\u2014do not have blended online portions, according to course information on Camlink, and Lee says that all the learning is done in person, not online.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously every course has D2L, but there\u2019s no official thing that says we go on D2L and receive X hours of instruction online,\u201d he says. \u201cI looked them up on Camlink; they\u2019re all listed as just the same as any regular course. There\u2019s no blended component. This is not to say there aren\u2019t blended courses. I\u2019m sure they exist, and in that case, I\u2019m sure that the pricing is probably valid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee says that he would like to see Camosun issue a refund to all the students who have, in his opinion, been overcharged. Lee adds, however, that no governing body has acknowledged that a refund would be valid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like Camosun to bring themselves back into compliance with their own policy,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that\u2019s fair and reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
By his own approximation, Lee feels he is owed $270 in fees. He has taken his concern to the Office of the BC Ombudsperson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t really want to refund all students affected, even though they are just as entitled as I am to that refund,\u201d he says, adding that he is not sure if students in other programs at the college have been impacted as well. \u201cThis is where it all gets very tricky; [the Office of the BC Ombudsperson] never officially acknowledged anything, even that there was any wrongdoing. They just floated over a phone call the possibility of refunding me and, eventually, my classmates.\u201d<\/p>\n
After reviewing a few course outlines, Boraas says he \u201cwould not be inclined to support\u201d Lee getting a refund for his classes, but he adds that Lee is always welcome to file an appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, unless there\u2019s something dramatic that I haven\u2019t seen, I don\u2019t see a justification for a refund,\u201d says Boraas. \u201cWe have been consistent in delivering what our contract with the student obliges us to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says that it\u2019s his intention to be more transparent to Camosun students about which courses have online and in-person components.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would encourage them to talk to the chair of their department if they have particular learning styles or approaches that they prefer,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it\u2019s a perception that somehow we\u2019re doing something sneaky… We are going to do an upgrade on the web describing the differences that are available. We\u2019re going to try to make this even more transparent. We do ensure that the course syllabus shows classroom hours versus online hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee says that he has contacted the Office of the BC Ombudsperson in the year since he made his initial inquiry and found that they had not looked into anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had given them a lot of time to go through with the investigation and see what they found,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I finally went back to their office and talked to them again, they still had nothing new to report.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outreach Information and Education Officer for the BC Ombudsperson Peggy Kulmala says she cannot discuss details of an ongoing investigation, nor can she confirm that an investigation has taken place or is taking place.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrivacy is so important in these investigations, so we just simply can\u2019t discuss any type of investigation or even confirm that one is ongoing,\u201d says Kulmala.<\/p>\n
Lee says that he has not brought this to anyone\u2019s attention, including his classmates, because he didn\u2019t want to make a big deal out of it, but he now believes people need to know.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hoping to have this dealt with without it becoming a massive scandal for everyone,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s rather unfortunate that it\u2019s come to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boraas says that the college will be getting rid of the \u201cB\u201d that indicates blended courses in course descriptions in an effort to provide clarity to students.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing transparent and clear about what the students should expect,\u201d he says, \u201cis what I\u2019ll take from this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Camosun student Justin Lee says that the college is not following its own regulations for its fee structures. The second-year Post-Degree Diploma in Business Administration-Accounting student noticed that Camosun is charging the same amount for 42-hour courses as it is for 56-hour versions of the same course; Lee says that this is not in line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-november-29-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15069"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15072,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069\/revisions\/15072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}