Leanna Ward

When I was a freshman in high school along with most other students at different institutions and grade levels, there was a little event that changed the course of our educational journeys. By “little” event I mean the Covid-19 pandemic. It not only made many people sick and caused millions of hospitalizations and deaths but how people lived had its greatest impact. Everything was now moved to Zoom and our reliance on technology was greater than ever. The problem with that is COVID-19 was officially declared no longer a global health emergency by the World Health Organization in May 2023. As of the time of writing this article, it’s been almost two years since that’s happened. I started college in September 2023 as a freshman; some months after Covid was no longer declared a threat according to the world’s leaders. While people and institutions have felt the impacts and still do to this day, it’s getting harder to draw the line between what happened in the past and how the effects still are felt now. Pace University is using a lot of online options which I don’t agree with. 

Kathryn Kormanik (Class of 2025), a Public Accounting major, talked about how her educational journey started at Pace in 2021 when COVID was still a threat yet wasn’t at its peak compared to 2020. She stated, “I had mainly in-person classes with a mix of synchronous but rarely any asynchronous ones.”

Restrictions like mask-wearing and social distancing were still in effect for her yet the professors still showed up. They were making the most of this situation, but it didn’t last long. She also stated “as I got further into my major, classes started being more online especially as they were on the city campus and couldn’t meet in person in Pleasantville, or if they were in-person they had a Zoom option which I noticed many students took advantage of.” People were starting to prefer meeting online rather than in-person if they had the chance. 

A professor in the Legal Studies and Taxation Department provided context into why Pace is continuing to use non-traditional teaching models. When the pandemic first started, students moved to synchronous courses meaning they were taught virtually but in real-time. Once Covid started to relax, Ernst & Young (EY), one of the big four accounting firms, approached Pace with the intent to get international and domestic students in training so they could earn a Master’s in Tax Degree (MS in Tax); it was a 7-week asynchronous program coinciding with April 15, or Tax Day. They would be doing classes while working at internships.

Pace also offers summer classes in the summer (split into Summer I and Summer II respectively) which roughly cover the same amount of time as the classes did for the Tax interns; people spent the same money but were taught half the time. Students could feel rushed and may not be able to always immediately comprehend the material, or well enough to just barely pass which can affect their confidence level. Also, the opposite was happening unlike what Kat had gone through when she first started college. It went from Zoom to in-person with restrictions and now back to Zoom again, or in some cases fully asynchronous. 

A history professor (who has chosen to remain anonymous), teaches an asynchronous course reported on students’ engagement with his course in the sense that they are not paying attention. He explains how on Brightspace, he’s able to monitor how far students have watched a lecture that he prerecorded. Not only do students not get that far into them, but they don’t watch them when they’re intended to with regards to the rest of the course thus piling up the material they have to catch up on.

He says: “I operate with the understanding that such a course follows a weekly schedule. It is imperative that students recognize that asynchronous courses are neither self-guided nor self-paced. These courses are not conducive to falling behind nor to marching ahead. Asynchronous courses follow a designated calendar. In general, students who are inactive in an asynchronous course are treated no differently than students who do not attend in-person lectures. In asynchronous courses, I am unsympathetic to students who take the assumption that I will accept eleventh-hour assignment submissions in good faith.”  

The syllabus for an asynchronous class lists assignments as being due on a certain date but doesn’t say when students have to do it. This can lead to confusion and them not prioritizing the class compared to their in-person classes if they have any of the latter thus affecting their performance. 

Andi el-Saieh (Class of 2026) a BA Psychology/aMa major, is no stranger to taking online courses.

When asked about whether they thought their non-in-person classes were graded fairly, they said “In general, I believe students often receive generous grades. Many online courses, especially at the 200- and 300-level, focus primarily on completion, ability to stay on topic, and on-time submission rather than the depth of the work itself. In many cases, simply submitting the assignment correctly accounts for a significant piece of the grade, making it easier to achieve high marks. While this helps fairness in grading, it sometimes feels like there’s less focus on detailed feedback or deeper engagement with the material. I personally have gotten frustrated at this, because I’ve had assignments for the same class whereas I’ll put so many hours into researching a topic, for it to receive the same grade as an assignment I did last minute.” 

By being taught this way, students do not develop a work ethic and only memorize the material rather than trying to understand it. College is a place to engage with academics and by doing this according to Andi we’re staying in the same place we were in high school; just trying to pass and get things done rather than feeling like we have learned anything. It’s true that for internships people learn “on the job” and don’t do homework but there must be some solid foundation. No one has to be perfect, but as I mentioned earlier if they lack confidence this can cause stress thus affecting their real-world experience. 

The same history professor had reported, “asynchronous course offerings are popular with students who have obligations to Pace athletics, students who are dually nontraditional and working professionals as well as students wishing to avail themselves of cross-campus Pace resources as their asynchronous instructor may not offer courses on that student’s home campus.”  

It is no secret students have busy schedules and are under a lot of (non)academic stress. They also have lives outside the classroom, and as a commuter-heavy school, students come to class and often leave. The problem with that is students still must schedule time out of their day (that already isn’t predetermined by an in-person lecture) to do their work.

In my opinion, I feel as if a lecture is a chance for educators to emphasize what’s important and will prioritize said topics. With asynchronous courses, reading a textbook and/or watching videos forces you to figure it out yourself. While you can still ask, there is no direct communication involved and you must try to contact them through other means (email, calls, etc.) Educators can still be busy but when students are in a classroom at the same time they are, there is more direct communication and interaction involved. It gets any clarification issues out of the way immediately rather than having it linger on your mind along with whatever else is bothering you. 

With all the resources and information distributed online, there are multiple ways for a student to get educated and learn new things. Not everything can be taught in a classroom yet with the tuition costs that students pay (which continues to grow), we should have the right to get our money’s worth. The classroom gives us an opportunity to build connections – with students and professors, but if this isn’t happening, I feel as if Pace almost doesn’t want anyone to commit here.

Peter Hansen (Class of 2026) who volunteers at Pace’s Center for Community Action & Research (CCAR) office, speculated “I know that recently a lot of the professors in Pleasantville have been retiring and their salary does not go back to the department they retired from, but rather the Provost who often puts it somewhere else entirely. In addition, the professors that are left are not teaching in-person and instead teach exclusively online or asynchronously.”

Academics of course are not everything a student prioritizes or is the only thing higher education has to offer, yet with how much it’s advertised and talked about, we have a right to be a part of that Opportunitas (Pace’s official motto a.k.a. “opportunity”).