College students frustrated, angry about handling of tuition refunds

By Peyton Stinnett
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer

The fall opening and rapid closing of college and university campuses hit by the COVID-19 pandemic have frustrated and angered many students looking for refunds of their hard-earned tuition money.

“Towson is scamming us. They just want to make money from a few weeks of housing and food before sending us home,” said Emily Chandler, a student and former Towson University employee, on an Instagram post. “This is careless and shows their true heart is in the money, not in our success.”

TU President Kim Schatzel paused all in-person learning shortly before the fall semester began on Monday, Aug. 24. The plan worked on all summer by a “Return to TU” team provided for 3,500 students in residence halls. The student count was 50 percent of Towson’s on-campus capacity before the pandemic. Last year’s enrollment was 22,000.

Schatzel called for complete remote teaching this fall when an unexpected batch of 55 positive COVID-19 tests were found in a sample.

Originally, Towson had students move into their dorms weeks before fall opening. With the positive tests, however, officials announced that classes would only be online for the first week. After that first week, officials decided to move online for the entire semester and asked all students to leave the dorms.

“I just wish I had known we would move to online before I moved into my apartment,” said Kiley Morgan, a TU political science major. “It’s annoying because I had to pay so much for school and they haven’t given us our money back on fees that don’t even make sense now that the school is closed.”

TU officials said in a statement that for full-time students the fee reduction would be $151.10. For part-time students, the fee reduction was $13.70 per unit. The amounts include tuition, housing, dining and parking freezes for the 2020-2021 school year, officials said.

Last semester, when the rapid spread of the coronavirus closed campus shortly before spring break, Towson’s Bursar’s Office calculated refunds for students for dining, parking, housing, and other fees. 

Many of Towson’s students were more frustrated by not being refunded the $500 athletic fee that was charged because sports have been suspended for the remainder of the semester.

Since the switch to remote learning for the fall, Towson has refunded 10 percent of the mandatory fees, with the exception of the technology fee, said Sean Welsh, interim vice president of Marketing & Communications.

“Technology fee was maintained due to the significant amount of technological improvements put into place for student-facing programming in response (to) the COVID-19 pandemic,” Welsh explained.

Welsh added, “The decision regarding the reductions was made in collaboration with TU’s Student Government Association. SGA requested a percentage refund of the athletics fee. The equivalent of that request is what has been refunded across all mandatory fees.”

Student anger prompted action by some. A Towson student created a petition to remove the athletics fee from students’ bills. So far, the petition has more than 5,000 signatures.

Besides Towson, other nearby colleges are struggling with similar issues.

Morgan State University said in a statement that room and board fees were refunded, as well as 43.75% of the total athletic, auxiliary facilities, and academic fees for the Spring 2020 semester.

Loyola University Maryland told students that they will not make any changes to their tuition. However, officials agreed to refund fees for housing and the $700 comprehensive fee for students not living on campus.

“I am not surprised they are not reducing tuition considering they were working so hard to go back to campus,” said Liam O’Brien, a finance major at Loyola, “so I’m not mad that they made those decisions.” 

Since the switch to online learning for the fall, Towson and other colleges have not announced plans for the spring semester.