£39k fees but can’t graduate due to boycott - any legal options?

[Keepcominghome]

I know a lot of our DC will be realising they either can’t graduate or are graduating with provisional degrees because of the marking boycott. There seems to be no end in sight so this could unfortunately go on for months or (worst case) years.

I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of the dispute, but I do feel our DC ought to be entitled to something (compensation ?) because they signed up to study towards a degree, they paid their fees, their did their work, but they have not been given degrees as they should have been. Surely there must be some breach of contract? I’m no lawyer, but I wondered whether anyone reading this might know the position, and whether our DC do have any chance of compensation. My DS is/was at a Scottish Uni (Edinburgh); does this makes it different?

Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. The universities can’t force the academics back to work. Employers will understand the situation the graduates are in so although it’s extremely frustrating they shouldn’t be disadvantaged.

My niece has just left Edinburgh and is getting interviews for masters and jobs and everywhere she applies to has acknowledged her situation.

Here’s an analysis:

https://wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/does-the-mab-mean-students-can-claim-a-refund/

and some background:

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-2023-marking-and-assessment-boycott-explained/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11688425/More-75-000-students-join-legal-action-demand-500-million-Universities.html#:~:text=6%20shares-,More%20than%2075%2C000%20students%20join%20legal%20action%20to%20demand%20up,learning%20from%20strikes%20and%20Covid&text=More%20than%2075%2C000%20students%20have,learning%20over%20strikes%20and%20Covid.

Hi, I'm a lawyer though not my specialism. Look up force majeure and strike action, it will give you an idea of the challenge in bringing the cases and the complexity of the legal arguments around this. If you add in universities to your search you may find some specific commentary on the university situation

Also - studentgroupclaim.co.uk - though remember this is a couple of law firms looking to bring a group litigation claim. Not all unis are covered at the moment.

Thanks so much for your replies. It’s clearly not simple, although the wonk he article does suggest there might be a prospect of success.

@paq I’m glad your nieces experience is that employers are understanding. I hope this continues - but my DS is going to be working in Europe where this whole situation is not something they’re used to at all.

I do not want to get tied up in any complicated legal case - we just want this to get sorted - but maybe a legal challenge might focus the minds?!

A legal challenge will not be quick.

I agree a legal challenge will not be quick or easy, but I continue to maintain that a serious threat of such will be the most likely thing to bring employers to the bargaining table.

The Office for Students did a Webinar or similar on students’ rights recently; IIRC it was on June 15. It might still be available online.

The first wonkhe link from @Paq contains a link to another wonkhe article explaining that the OfS is likely to take a dim view of any claims that industrial action constitutes force majeure. I hope this analysis is correct. Ad I understand things that would give great weight to any class action suit.

@Keepcominghome what advice is Edinburgh giving him?

it absolutely sucks, I get it. But like the teachers’ and doctors’ strikes, I do believe in the reasons behind the strikes. While wealthy universities like Edinburgh could afford to improve pay/benefits, the demands would bankrupt others.

Universities are caught between having to treat students as customers and not being allowed to charge for the actual cost of educating them, which results in staff being squeezed.

In my final term of university the library staff went on strike so we couldn’t check out any books (in the era when we had to read physical books). It’s was a f-ing nightmare at the time but on the med-long term it didn’t matter.

@paq Edinburgh University has not been very communicative; they’ve just said they can’t decide on the degree outcome (so no degree at all) but please come to a ‘graduation’ anyway. They’ve given students a document setting out what courses they’ve done to date which have been marked, which can be given to an employer etc. but it’s definitely not a degree. They cannot give any date when this situation will change - and there seems to be a real risk that they could never get a degree outcome.

In that worst case scenario, which we hope would not happen but does seem possible, they would then not be able to prove they are graduates (because they’re not) and would be excluded from professions which require you to be a graduate eg teaching, and postgraduate study, despite having worked (and paid) for their degree assessments. It just feels legally, as well as morally, wrong for universities to leave their students in this position.

If Edinburgh can afford to pay more, maybe the threat of legal action might make them reach a local settlement; a one size fits all pay structure seems really unrealistic when the sector is so varied.

I really feel for the current graduates. As if the student debts weren't bad enough, they've had covid to contend with (and some Unis made a bad thing worse due to their actions during the covid years), then strikes during term time, and now marking strikes. It's all so unfair on them.

”a one size fits all pay structure seems really unrealistic when the sector is so varied.”

That’s what we’ve got to work with though, same as national pay scales for public sector. These are national strikes involving HE unions. Suing individual universities won’t help (unless they’ve been totally negligent).

This page from Edinburgh gives some information: https://www.ed.ac.uk/student-administration/industrial-action

@Paq the thing is they’re not in the public sector - they’re independent, like independent schools, and some are very rich and some are fighting off bankruptcy. The government won’t get involved.

Our DC have contracts with individual universities so if there is a breach of contract it is with that single university, not the sector. As I understand it, UCEA is an employers group - like the CBI maybe - but each university can choose whether to be part of it or not. They’ve chosen - presumably in tandem with the unions - to have a sector wide pay scale. But that does mean that the union demands for pay increases might be affordable for some universities but for others might make them eg shut courses or in a few cases go bankrupt. And our DC are stuck in the middle having played (and paid) their part but without degrees or grades they deserve under the contracts they signed when they started their course.

Universities are not private sector though - they are exempt charities. Apart from the actual private universities, e.g. Regents. And the impact of universities going bankrupt would be even more catastrophic to the students enrolled there than that suffered by Edinburgh students having to wait for their degree classification.

Universities cannot choose to opt out of national bargaining without consequence - it would be a death knell. Who would want to work for a university that signalled it intends to underpay staff in relation to the sector?

The universities that aren't wealthy are more likely to be the lower tariff universities serving local populations and contributing proportionally more to social mobility than those disproportionately accepting middle class students. Undermining them would not be in the overarching interests of young people.

@paq two small specialists have gone out of business; the Office for Students made sure students could move to other institutions but seemed happy for them to close. Larger ones in financial difficulty would be a bigger test but I really doubt there would be government bail outs. I hear what you’re saying about the sector, but it does seem to the case that some HEIs are probably unable to pay as much as others without a hit to their sustainability.

Neither we nor our DC can do much about that - but there really isn’t a level playing field across the sector so I’m afraid I’m pessimistic about any settlement anytime soon, especially if the strikes are only having an impact in a few institutions. Legal challenge would be a last resort but what else can be done if our DC are still without their degrees in sixth months time? it’s not just classifications they’re waiting for - they have no degree at all. At this point my DS would be happy with an unclassified degree so he could at least be classed as a graduate.

Hi, my dc is in same position at Durham, no classification, no degree. Looking to do masters at another university that’s insisting on degree classification. This despite Durham saying it will do everything to ensure progression and the other university stating publicly the same . It’s a farce. Heartbreaking at the ‘graduation’ ceremony.