[rant]Contact Hour Billing

[jahcs]

Why are we doing this?
Charging by billing hours more fairly distributes the cost of instruction to those students who receive extra instruction. Students will now pay a more equitable amount for the instruction time they receive. Based on this system, only students who are the recipients of additional instruction will pay for additional billing hours.

In most of my college courses 80% (or more) of the teacher's time was taken by 10% (or less) of the students. That's if the instructor actually taught the class. And TA's gave alot of the lectures, supervised the labs, and graded most of the papers and tests.

Under the new system, the cost for attending a course will be determined by the course’s billing hours, instead of credit hours. A billing hour represents an amount of time that a student spends in direct contact with an instructor or with laboratory equipment. Several factors are considered in determining the billing hours of a course. The main factor is the number of hours the student is expected to either be in class or in another “instructional” setting (such as a lab) in a typical week for a full semester course.

In the classes I took the credits were "credit hours" which were balanced against the expected homework and total class time investments. Now they just charge a premium for the class time.
Lab fees are meant to cover the cost of labs. They are also worth credits, which are paid for through tuition. Again they are charging you a premium. Usually for a TA to sit in the corner with homework from one of his other courses. (If you are a TA I know you probably work hard. How much do you get paid to be a TA? -- especially when the students signing up to take, and are paying for, a class expect to have more than fleeting contact with the professor.

I wonder if this will lead to bloated lecture times? Extending the lecture periods by one hour per week times 30-45 students. Balanced against a teacher who is getting paid salary. The credit hours probably wouldn't change for the course. Tuition money taken in by the college goes up, minimal new expense-until the teacher's union renegotiates the contracts.