When industrial action took weeks out of students’ tuition, petitions were signed demanding money back from universities.
When the pandemic led to tuition moving online and campuses being shut, similar petitions grew exponentially.
Students are consumers of an educational product, and they should have consumer rights. They were well aware of this and were understandably aggrieved with their universities.
Unlike other suppliers of services, such as private schools, universities did not reduce their fees to their customers to reflect the sub-optimal service that they provided during strikes and lockdowns.
When student petitions failed, and political lip-service produced nothing, it was natural for students to consider a legal route to seek redress based on breaches of contract, underpinned by consumer protection legislation.
