news // no. 4

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Good spots still available... maybe!?!

» Douglas reminds students of late registration option

Atiba Nelson
Staff Reporter

 

We summer graduation
ceremonies suspended and a
recent announcement by the Minister
of Education touting that the province
does not have a timeline for reopening
classrooms, Douglas pushes ahead with
summer registration and a summer
semester.

Towards the end of March, Douglas
communicated that summer courses
would be online to support students’ class,
program, and degree completion, with the
added benefit of allowing the college to
comply with the Provincial Health Officer's
social distancing directive.

Last year, according to the Douglas
College “Institution Accountability Plan
and Report 2018/19 Reporting Cycle,”
approximately 7,500 students enroll in
summer courses. The report—which is
submitted annually to the Post-Secondary
Audit and Accountability Branch of
the Ministry of Education—states that
domestic enrollments were flat and
the college has been buttressed by
international enrollment.

However, with international travel
slowed and the transition to online
instruction, there may be less students
partaking in the 2020 summer semester.
To combat the flattening of domestic
enrollments and decrease of international
enrollments that could hamper the
college’s economics, Douglas reminded

Instructor

for Douglas to do more

» Tuition freezes and refunds are among the proposed options

students that some Douglas programs are
accepting applications.

The college prompted Canadian
students, via their website, to apply
to the summer 2020 semester and the

 

advocates

programs accepting applications by May 10.
Interested students were asked to call the
Registrar's Office via a Zoom teleconference
meeting code to find out what programs
would be accepting applications.

Photo by Billy Bui

Students applying to the college
during late registration would be subject
to all the same requirements of any
perspective applicant—including fees and
official documentation.

“Students applying between April
20 and May 10 must send their required
documentation to us immediately. We
do not guarantee their acceptance for
summer if their admission documentation
is delayed,” stated the press release on the
Douglas News page.

Douglas does caution applicants that
late registration is a difficult process, for
example full courses, accessing course
materials, and de-registration, but reminds
students to reach out to the Registrar for
more information.

“Applying and registering once the
semester starts can be challenging,’ reads
the online news announcement. “If you
miss one or more classes at the beginning
of the semester, you may find yourself too
far behind to catch up. Some instructors
hold quizzes as early as the second week of
classes.”

As an example of the degree of
difficulty associated with late registration,
the Criminology diploma—the fourth most
popular Douglas’ program by number of
applications in the 2017 to 2018 academic
year—is open to application via the open
enrollment stream. Yet, at the time of
writing this, only two of the 34 courses
offered in the summer semester have space
to register.

Atiba Nelson
Staff Reporter

 

ith the curve flattening,

the start of spring, and
dwindling economic options
ahead, a group of protestors have
begun imploring the provincial
government to ease public health
restrictions which they find
oppressive.

However, this group is not
the only cohort upset at their
institutions. Irritated college
students in the United States
have begun demanding their
educational institutions refund
tuition due to lackluster online
course delivery. Some have sued
their schools with the hopes of
receiving thousands of dollars
back.

The lynchpin of the lawsuits
is that students believe their
educational institutions did not
honour their agreement to provide
the necessary tools to learn during
campus closures and mandatory
online classes.

“lam missing out on

everything that [my university]
has to offer—from libraries, the
gym, computer labs, study rooms,
and lounges,” said Grainger
Rickenbaker—a student who

is suing Philadelphia’s Drexel
University—in an interview with
Bloomberg News.

Rickenbaker pays over $60,000
in tuition and living expenses.
Although Douglas College tuition
is not as expensive, a Douglas
professor believes that the college
should be helping students during
the COVID-19 pandemic, albeit not
through a refund.

Chris Maguire, a faculty
member in the English language
learning and acquisition (College
Preparatory English) department,
recently advocated for a tuition
decrease of 50 percent at Douglas.
He states that the pandemic
presents a good time for the college
to raise goodwill in the eyes of
students.

“Tt’s a time in our society when
we need to do the right thing,”
Maguire told the New Westminster
Record, “it seems it would bea

good time for them to make that
grand gesture.’

Maguire argues that
Douglas is profitable annually
and a decrease in profit over
several semesters would not
impact the college’s bottom line,
especially when the students
served by the college are facing
economic hardships.

“If Douglas only makes
$1 million next year instead of
$10 or $7 [million], what’s the
harm?” said Maguire. Although
Douglas College is a not-for-
profit entity, the college does
have an endowment of over
20 million dollars through the
Douglas College Foundation—
which can operate at the behest
of the college.

“Tuition [is] increasing
faster than the cost of living
for students that I teach, that
are international, and they’re
increasing [tuition] to [the]
maximum allowable by law for
the domestic students, and it’s
not necessary to do it unless you
need the money,” said Maguire.

 

WELCOME

 

Photo by Billy Bui