Editor’s Note: This is an opinion piece and does not represent the opinion of Beaver’s Digest. This op-ed reflects the personal opinions of the writer. 

College is expensive, that’s no secret. Tuition, student fees, housing, food, transportation and, of course, learning materials like textbooks all drain our pockets.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic, a new era of online learning has taken over undergraduate education, slowly spelling the end of expensive textbooks and handwritten homework. Applications like the university-wide TopHat are taking over the education world, and the financial burden students bear.

While this transition to online learning has modernized education, it has also created many issues for students and faculty, specifically with the costs associated with online learning. Many students are forced to juggle multiple expensive subscriptions to stay on top of course work, and these expenses can pile up fast. 

When I first started school at Oregon State University, I was shocked and frustrated by how expensive online applications cost. I thought that having to pay to do homework was ridiculous, and a trap to force students to pay to succeed. There is no way to pass most classes at OSU without some form of costly online software, and there are no cheap alternatives like there are for physical textbooks. 

I am far from the only student at OSU that has felt this frustration.

A recent poll on the Beaver’s Digest Instagram of around 60 students found that barely over 50% prefer this online-learning method and find it beneficial for learning.

Another poll found an even more shocking result: 97 percent of the 74 students surveyed answered “yes” when asked if students pay too much for online homework. 

“I’m surprised by that, but I’m also not surprised, because after paying tuition, fees, everything else at the university, one of the last things students have to make the purchases for are course materials,” said James Howard, the Beaver Store’s Chief Academic Materials Officer since 2001.

The Beaver Store is a non-profit organization and, according to Howard, has actually seen significant drops in the money they make related to materials.

“My bottom line — and this is on the course materials side — has precipitously dropped,” Howard said. 

But while Howard and the Beaver Store are losing money from the transition to digital learning, they are still gaining customers. 

“Because of digital, my market share — in terms of who I’m selling to — has actually increased … because I’m selling less expensive things, more people are buying from us,” Howard said. 

This may be because alternatives to the Beaver Store are not viable. 

For example, to subscribe to TopHat, the only options are through TopHat itself or through the Beaver Store. Print offers many cheap alternatives, like used textbooks or online PDFs  — online learning doesn’t. 

This lack of options for students eliminates any chance to save money on course materials. 

Regardless, Howard and the Beaver Store continue to focus on providing students with the cheapest and highest-quality material, regardless of whether it’s physical print or online.

“Our approach has always been twofold. One is … to provide course materials that faculty require, and then our second … is to provide those course materials at the lowest possible cost,” Howard said.

The materials that come at the lowest possible cost are often the online ones, even if it doesn’t feel that way to students. 

“Print is wickedly more expensive,” Howard said.

According to research Howard did on prices for students at OSU, on average, “digital was 44% less expensive than the print options that were out there.”

Howard reported only about a $2 average difference between used textbooks and online-homework applications.

Regardless, for most classes, especially introductory-level courses, the choice between digital and print no longer exists — digital is the only option.

Losing the choice between print and digital is a result of the transition to digital at OSU. This choice has partially been driven by professors themselves and the materials they choose to utilize.

“I think faculty are doing a really good job as well,” Howard said. “They understand the affordability issue, and they’re using the material where they can find it, that is appropriate for their classes.”

Lou Wojcinski, one of the instructors for the entry-level CH 12X General Chemistry series, relies on these online options. For Wojcinski, the price as well as the flexibility makes online learning the preferred option for students and instructors. 

The general chemistry course is one of the largest classes at OSU. Online learning helps Wojcinski  manage his classroom and provide students with feedback on homework that would be impossible without help from technology.

“I can see how there would be greater benefit to collecting written homework, and looking at it, and giving (students) a bunch of feedback … There’s just no way to do that at scale,” Wojcinski said.

Especially for a topic like chemistry, feedback and assistance is crucial. 

Wojcinski relies on an application called AktivChemistry for homework, and the practice and repetition the application provides is foundational for student learning. Along with mass feedback, online applications, specifically TopHat, help him gauge where his classes are at with content comprehension.

“I think it’s a good way for me to see how the class is doing collectively,” Wojcinski said. 

Along with the class engagement, TopHat enables OSU instructors to monitor more. 

“I can really edit what (students) read. … In TopHat, I can get rid of a lot of unnecessary reading,” Wojcinski said.

However, for Wojcinski and other instructors who use TopHat, more adaptation will be required. 

Starting in summer, the university will be leaving TopHat behind, and changing to an application called Poll Everywhere. 

For instructors like Wojcinski, TopHat will be hard to replace. He has built significant material into TopHat.

“The ability to edit the reading and put that stuff in front of students is going to be much harder to replace,” he said. 

TopHat leaving the university will also be a major point of future frustration for students who have purchased long-term plans by TopHat, including a plan for a four-year subscription. 

For Howard, pivoting away from TopHat also has drawbacks; Poll Together will likely not be sold by the Beaver Store like TopHat, but rather embedded into student fees. 

The change away from TopHat will have speed bumps across OSU, but speed bumps and difficult decisions are nothing new when regarding online learning and its financial burden.

But through all of the debate about the effectiveness of online learning compared to physical, one key question gets overlooked: Why should students have to pay to do homework at all? 

College is already a humongous financial challenge — why does the university seek to make it even more expensive?

There are plenty of classes I’ve taken at OSU with no textbooks, no extra fees and no additional costs. These classes have been some of the most enriching, interesting and well-taught classes I’ve taken, so what is keeping more instructors from trying to save their students money? 

For courses like chemistry, the need for repetition and feedback is undeniable, and the platforms used by students do come at a relatively affordable price. However, for many other courses at OSU, it’s hard not to feel frustrated by the need to break out the checkbook just to pass the class.