Readers of The News may not realize that there are many fully online students that will never pick up a paper copy of Eastern’s student run newspaper, or even set foot in Charleston.

According to the website Univstats.com there were a total of 1,459 students enrolled in an online program at Eastern in the 21-22 school year.

That makes up about 17% of Eastern students that are online exclusively in the 21-22 school year.

One of the nice perks remote learners enjoy is the convenient and money-saving textbook rental service that ships out required textbooks for each student. However, this year the textbooks were late! 

To the credit of the textbook rental service, since I began my graduate program in the summer of 2022 my textbooks arrived reliably before each semester started. 

So, when on the first day of classes I had not received my textbooks, I wrote an email to Textbook Rental Service and never heard anything back. I notified my teacher and waited a couple days before sending another email, which again was ignored.

Midweek of the first week of instruction I looked up the textbook rental service’s phone number and called. Why not send a message telling students what it took a staff member one minute to tell me: they were running late and that they will get the textbooks shipped out as soon as possible.

I eventually received my textbooks on the Friday of the first week of class, which is not a catastrophic failure. But, it should never be the responsibility of a student to ask the school “where are my textbooks and what should I tell my teacher?”

With all the social media that Eastern uses for outreach, as well as other communications channels available, why not communicate the delay?

I still have many questions about it: were all online students effected? How many hundreds of people were left in the dark? Did other people receive a courtesy notice that textbook shipping delays were imminent?

So, while I am a little upset about the customer service failure of Eastern’s book rental service, I think the lesson is to communicate early and communicate often. Nowhere on Eastern’s social media (or even in The News), was there information about textbook rental shipping delays.

I did not even get an email. This all makes me think that online degree students are not much of a priority. 

Online students are paying customers, too. And while we are not present in person, we do deserve the courtesy of being told what to expect.

Eastern is no Amazon.com, and perhaps administration should reconsider the scope of their services if they are not able to fulfill demand reliably and with transparency. 

If they cannot, then perhaps it is time to consider outsourcing this crucial service to vendors who can.

Dan Hahn can be reached at dhahn@eiu.edu or 217-581-2812.