UK Universities Told To Refund Half Of Fees Over Strike Failings

Students should be refunded at least 50 per cent of their
tuition fees for lost teaching time by universities that failed to
minimise the disruption caused by last year’s lecturer strikes, the
Office of the Independent Adjudicator has said.

The independent body which looks at complaints across higher
education, said that was the “starting point” for those
affected.

Fourteen days of teaching were lost when staff, including
lecturers and academics, from 65 universities across the UK walked
out early last year in a dispute over pensions.

The Independent reports that the University and College Union
estimated that the action, which was called off in April affected
more than 1 million students and a total of 575,000 teaching hours
were lost.

Case summaries, published on the Office of the Independent
Adjudicator website, show that some universities have been better
at making up lost learning by providing lecture recordings and
podcasts.

“Others have done nothing and we don’t think that’s fair,” said
Felicity Mitchell, the independent adjudicator said. “We have made
recommendations in a number of cases for partial refunds of tuition
fees and payments for distress and inconvenience where we have
decided the student has not been treated fairly.”

A batch of reports from the watchdog earlier this year showed
that individual universities had been told to refund students
hundreds of pounds each.