Students should sue their striking college lecturers

Let us suppose I am a pushy parent desperate to get my son into a good school, but I know his maths isn’t quite up to it. I hire a tutor to give extra coaching and hope it will make a difference. It hardly bears saying, but if the tutor doesn’t turn up, he or she doesn’t get paid. Or, let us suppose I am a music student whose singing or piano playing needs extra polish. I work in McDonald’s or borrow the money for a course of additional lessons. Again, if my teacher doesn’t give me the lessons, he or she doesn’t get paid either.

Last week, students in 58 universities who have either taken out huge loans to pay the costs of their education, or are being bankrolled by their parents, did not receive the teaching they paid for: yet their institutions kept their money. There is an industrial relations disaster in many parts of academia. A third wave of strike action by dons in as many years was triggered by plans to cut their pensions, on top of what they claim is a 20 per cent cut in real earnings since 2009.

It is possible that the massive expansion of tertiary education in the last 30 years has, perhaps, drained the dons’ talent pool, filling the most under-performing universities with underperforming dons who are lucky to have a job at all. Any disregard with which “the management” – vice-chancellors and other administrative staff – treat them may be dictated by market forces. But, whatever the cause, this acrimony is causing collateral damage among students, though giving them a valuable life-lesson in the sheer unfairness of strike action.

Most undergraduates rack up debt at the rate of £9,250 a year in tuition fees alone. The present cohort has already suffered thanks to the pandemic, which has denied them personal contact with teachers, caused lectures to be delivered solely by video-call, and deprived them of the social and personal experiences that contribute to the maturing experience of university.

In that context, being also denied proper teaching through strike action, with the consequences that that might entail for a student’s life-chances, is really too much to endure. And customers certainly should not be expected to pay for this denial of service.

As with those who shell out for extra maths coaching or piano lessons, those who have paid for a university education have a right to expect tuition in return. If it is not forthcoming, the institutions who fail to keep their side of the bargain should be subject to the same trading laws as every other business, and be made to refund money to their customers when goods are not provided.

A university education is not a luxury; in many industries it is now a necessity, and its importance to the student is such that the law must provide remedies to those cheated of it.

For that reason it might teach our universities a valuable lesson if they were to be at the receiving end of a class action from students demanding their money back, and suing for (considerable) damages too. There must, surely, be some future genius lawyers in our universities today who could cut their teeth on this very problem – and they should.

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