Colleges face lawsuits over COVID changes
Students in lawsuits across the nation say they didn’t get what they paid for.
Students nationwide are demanding refunds, saying they didn’t get what they paid for before the pandemic.
SAN DIEGO — Handson learning. Face- to- face interactions. Study sessions in the student union. Workouts in the student gym.
That’s what students said they signed up for — and were required to pay for — when they attended universities across the country last spring.
But, they argue, it’s not what they got once the coronavirus drove them off campus. And now they want their money back.
Class- action lawsuits calling for partial reimbursement of tuition and fees are continuing to amass nationwide — from Ivy League institutions to goliath state university systems to small private colleges — with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
Lawsuits challenging the entire University of California and California State University systems are already deep into litigation. If certif ied as class actions, the cases could incorporate more than 750,000 students combined.
And the University of San Diego is facing similar claims in a case f iled on Oct. 1.
The lawsuits don’t begrudge the universities for abruptly closing campuses to prevent the spread of COVID- 19. But they are asking courts to weigh who should bear the f inancial burden of any fallout.
And while the litigation will ultimately be decided on legal questions, the lawsuits are also serving as a backdrop for a larger conversation about the value of a four- year degree, whether earned in a traditional college setting or online, and the soaring costs often associated with it.
“There have been these questions about value bub
bling under the surface for a long time, and the pandemic burst that wide open,” said Tamara Hiler, director of education for Third Way, a centrist think tank that has polled on higher education policy and attitudes.
“We’re willing to pay something,” she said, “but what exactly are we paying for?”
At the heart of the lawsuits are the allegations that schools breached a contract with students by failing to provide an agreed- upon service in exchange for an agreed- upon price, and that the schools were unjustly enriched by retaining those funds.
Haley Martinez and Matthew Sheridan, students of USD’s Paralegal Certificate Program, argue in their recent lawsuit that they did not get the full value out of their $ 6,500- plus in tuition and fees when they were forced to f inish the spring semester online.
USD students “contracted and paid for an education, not course credits,” the lawsuit says. “They paid for the robust education and full experience of academic life on USD’s campus; remote online learning cannot provide the same value as inperson education.”
The lawsuit points to USD’s own tuition structure, which assigns a different dollar value to in- person instruction than it does to online learning. For example, a master of science in healthcare informatics costs $ 1,580 per unit for on- campus classes compared with $ 925 per unit for the online version.
Sheridan missed out on a “real world” internship that the paralegal program had promised, according to the lawsuit. He had to make do with a simulated one instead, adding to the concern that he may be at a disadvantage when it comes time to get a job, said one of his Washington, D. C.- based lawyers, Yvette Golan.
“They’re suffering like all USD students. It’s not just this semester or last semester,” said Golan, who is also helping litigate a case against the University of Rochester, as well as Yale University, Northwestern University, Boston College and others. “Their education is going to follow them throughout their careers.”
While the USD lawsuit names only two paralegal students for now, it asks for a judge to certify a class action that would include all of the school’s affected student
body, some 9,000 students.
That lawsuit, like many, leaves open how much students should receive in refunds. Undergraduate students at USD pay more than $ 25,000 for tuition per semester and $ 360 in mandatory fees. That does not include room and board costs, which were refunded when the students moved out.
A USD representative declined to address the specifics of the lawsuit. But she explained that the school has tried to bolster the learning experience in light of the pandemic, as well as weather a f inancial crisis without cutting jobs or passing extra costs on to students.
An increase in tuition that hit this fall had been approved in 2019, before COVID- 19, said spokeswoman Lissette Martinez. Some in- person instruction has come back to campus this fall, but most classes are still being taught online. Oncampus services — many of which are typically paid for by tuition or other fees — are still accessible virtually, including the library, counseling and health services, ministry, social organizations and career services.
“We are investing in technology in the classrooms to ensure the hybrid model delivers on our commitment to academic excellence. This summer, more than 350 of our faculty enrolled in training courses on delivering the highest- quality educational experience grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition, regardless of the delivery mode,” Martinez said.
The private school is facing an expected budget shortfall of more than $ 40 million this academic year.
“With the pandemic, everybody’s had to make adjustments, including schools — I get that,” said Golan, the attorney. “Students and parents are taking on massive loans at a time their jobs aren’t necessarily guaranteed. A lot are losing work.
“USD is in a f inancially superior position to handle a risk like this,” she added. “Students are not.”
Other lawsuits nationwide are much further along in litigating the issue. The results have been mixed, and it remains unclear whether the various state and federal courts tapped to hear the matters will come to any kind of universal agreement.
“This case is novel in the sense that there is no legal precedent involving a pandemic’s impact on a school’s promise to provide in- person learning when doing so would be unsafe and/ or against government mandates,” a federal judge in Tampa wrote in considering a lawsuit against Florida Southern College.
The judge went on to rule that the case can continue to move forward, one of a handful of similar cases that have passed initial hurdles.
Meanwhile, on the same day that USD students filed their suit in San Diego federal court, a federal judge in Boston largely dismissed a similar action f iled against Northeastern University.
Lawsuits against California’s state school systems, f iled by students elsewhere in the state, are at a crucial point as federal judges in Los Angeles and San Francisco consider whether the cases should be dismissed or move toward trial.
The lawsuits point to federal pandemic stimulus money that California’s universities have been given to help them and their students through the crisis — more than $ 785 million between the two main systems. Attorneys representing a Sonoma State University student suing the CSU argued “the CARES funds are intended to be used as emergency cash grants, not as a vehicle for universities to retain money that is not theirs to retain.”
School officials, in turn, note hemorrhaging budgets. San Diego State University, which is still largely teaching online, is expecting to address a $ 67- million budget gap this year, part of a combined $ 750 million in losses and unexpected costs across the CSU’s 23 campuses, according to officials.
A survey commissioned by Third Way and New America in August shows rising debt remains a major concern among college and high school seniors, as is the ability to get a job after graduation in a weakened economy. More than half of college students — 54% — also expressed reservations that their degree may lose value because it was earned online.
“The general sentiment is: What is the value of higher education, and what is the return on investment that students and families expect to see?” said Hiler, of Third Way, who has advocated for greater transparency in college costs.
While the majority of the college students surveyed still believe there is value in obtaining a degree and don’t plan on changing their educational trajectory, nearly half also said that higher education is not worth the cost anymore.
Some schools, including Georgetown University and Princeton University, have acknowledged such concerns — at least in part. Both schools discounted fall tuition by 10%.