University students in the UK are joining a class action to demand compensation for the classes they lost during the UCU strike earlier this year.
Law firm Asserson has created a website for students to sign up to the group claim – more than 1,000 students have now joined, which the firm considers is enough to apply for a Group Litigation Order “in the near future”, it says in a statement.
“If the class action is accepted, universities would pay out millions of pounds”
But Asserson expects more students will sign up to the action, which could potentially see universities face claims for millions of pounds.
“With the UCU estimating in March that strike action affected a million students, with the loss of 575,000 teaching hours that will not be rescheduled, we’re expecting a surge of sign ups over the coming weeks,” Shimon Goldwater, a senior solicitor at Asserson, said.
“If the class action is accepted, universities would pay out millions of pounds. Over 20,000 undergraduates attend each large UK university. Paying approximately £500 compensation each to 20,000 students would cost £10 million.”
About 27% of the signatories are international students, Asserson reveals in a statement.
One of the signatories, an international student from Canada, complained about the lack of information.
“The school and the administration knew these strikes were happening and did very little to prepare us students,” he said. “It was all very frustrating as we would walk around campus unsure if we had classes or if our professor had joined the strike.”
For law student Robert Liow, the strike has had a strong impact on international students.
“Education was never thought as a commodity, but the truth is that to international students, universities have always been selling education. There is a promise that when we come to this country, we are going to be given a certain type of education – people pay a lot of money for the privilege. We expect the education that we pay for,” he told The PIE News.
But the problem is not just with the tuition fees, he explained.
“If you are here for just one year and one third of your course has been taken away by the strike…to have this done to your student experience – this especially impacts all international students.”
Liow, who comes from Singapore but is originally from Malaysia, was among the first to start a campaign asking universities to refund fees. He joined the group claim in solidarity with the academics who were striking against the proposed changes to their pension scheme, he told The PIE.
Support for lecturers on strike was widespread among students.
“If we win this group claim, it sets a precedent for refunds in the future and this is going to create quite a big impact on the universities,” he claimed.
“They know in the future that if they do anything that will trigger a strike action, they are liable to pay back students, and this is a form of leverage that will work in favour of lecturers and academics who are striking.”
“We expect the education that we pay for”
A series of petitions have been started by students at various universities asking for compensation over lost lectures or leniency in exam marking after the strike and two students from the University of Nottingham created a compensation calculator.
The strike caused worry also overseas, with the Chinese embassy expressing concern over how the strike was going to affect Chinese students in Britain.
While some universities have stated they would use any salary savings from the strike to fund student services, many students don’t find this acceptable and want to receive direct financial compensation, Asserson claimed.
The law firm is planning to apply for a Group Litigation Order, and said that those students who are not part of the group will still have a few months to join the collective action.
UUK wasn’t able to provide a comment on the compensation claim at this stage, but pointed to a document which offers information for students wishing to file a complaint, including guidance from the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, which students can reach if their complaint hasn’t been solved internally by the university.
The processes, the document explains, are informal and designed to be an alternative to the adversarial legal processes.
As for international students, the document states that their Tier 4 visa status should not have been affected, with absences during the strike being recorded as ‘authorised absences.’
A group of international students at LSE were recently successful in their legal battle for compensation after their accommodation provided by Unite Students was seen to be sub-standard.
