The editorial board of The Miami Student feels the board of trustees lacked a certain appreciation for cognitive dissonance when they approved a new $50 fee for some service learning classes in which students volunteer. The fee will only apply to service learning classes using the resources of the Office of Community Engagement and Service (OCE&S), which provides contacts, expertise, scheduling and transportation.
The editorial board is very excited about service learning courses and welcomes their new popularity among faculty and administrators. The $50 fee is mostly disturbing in the context of the many other supplementary fees paid by students. There is, for instance, the surcharge that will rise to $100 per credit hour for most business courses. There is the fee being charged for the student center to students who will not actually be here by the time construction is finished. Apparently the same thinking applies to the $50 fee for service learning. Administrators admit the fee will be used to help the office expand. This board feels a fee charged to students for a class they are taking should reflect, dollar for dollar, the services actually being provided.
Miami University likes to boast about being a good value, but assessing fee upon fee adds up.
Core services that can be used by students in all academic disciplines should be funded by tuition, not fees. A lab fee for a science class makes a certain amount of sense because specific materials are being purchased and used, and those materials are only relevant to a specific class. Service learning is clearly different. Although some specific services are provided to students paying the fee, at least part of the fee is going toward building up OCE&S. If OCE&S is something that can benefit all students and is worth funding, it should be funded by tuition dollars.
This board feels service learning is indeed valuable enough to merit a more solid funding source. This would require administrators to do a little bit of thinking to find the money. They would have to creatively reconsider core priorities. Instead, Miami has again taken the quick and easy way out with student fees. Each office and department of the university should not be expected to be a money-making machine. While the bottom line must always be considered, Miami needs to stop seeing students as bottomless pits of cash and realize that having to pay a fee to volunteer is not true value.
Read More
How one professor and her classes are preserving Oxford’s Black history
By Sean Scott | March 20, 2024Jazma Sutton, an assistant professor of history, teaches The Black Midwest (HST 350Q) and Black Women in America (HST 450D) classes. In both courses, she has students working with the Smith Library of Regional History and Miami’s archives to document and preserve Black history in Oxford.
Miami faculty members recount Freedom Summer in new documentary
By Luke Macy | February 25, 2022After seven years of work, “Training for Freedom,” a documentary highlighting Oxford’s involvement in the Freedom Summer of 1964, premiered on PBS Western Reserve on Valentine’s Day.
“Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic”: History in the making
By Alice Momany | August 29, 2021In March 2020, Miami University’s archives launched “Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a collection focused on life during the COVID-19 pandemic.