Students suing universities over remote learning

[Caracal]

The stuff with people attempting to argue that they received substandard classes is even less likely to go anywhere. Courts aren't going to decide that you get some money back because your chemistry lab didn't involve making things bubble in person. They don't want to get involved in trying to make pedagogical decisions.

That's the argument regarding general education classes to check a science requirement.  People who need to be proficient at certain techniques can show damages, because they will have to retake classes.  Lecture may have been fine, but not actual lab to practice techniques.

Likewise students who were supposed to have performance-based courses in theatre or art like sculpture really didn't get what they paid for and can prove damages.

It doesn't work that way. You can't get damages just because something might have been better for you and it didn't happen. You have to show that someone was actually in breach of their contract with you. The problem with suing a University for breach of contract is that the contract is implied. There's not some detailed list of things a school promises to provide a student with in return for tuition. That implied contract is still enforceable, but  the bar is really high. For example, a student might be able to sue for breach of contract if they successfully completed all the requirements for graduation and the school refused to let them graduate for no valid reason. However, courts have pretty consistently held that they don't want to get into second guessing universities on decisions about matters of curriculum and other academic matters.

To take an example that seems applicable, a court held that when a University decided to eliminate a dental school, current dental students couldn't sue for breach of contract since the school had acted in good faith, given reasonable notice,  and had made efforts to provide assistance to students who wanted to transfer to other schools. Basically, courts have only been willing to consider breach of contract suits when someone can show that a school acted in bad faith.

[Parasaurolophus]

Sounds like it could be the sort of thing that sounds absolutely frivolous on the face of it but which, when investigated, actually involves a serious harm. Like the McDonald's coffee lady, who was actually quite seriously burned by her coffee.

Meh, probably not. The thing about lawsuits is that anyone can sue someone. You just need to find a lawyer who thinks it seems worth a shot. There are a lot of lawyers and plenty of them are not very good at their jobs. It seems like these are mostly attempts to sue based on breach of contract. I'd guess that a lot of these suits are going to get tossed just because it is going to be very hard for someone to show clear damages. Did you get your credits? Did you take classes? Ok, what do you want money for? It seems like these parents and students are trying to claim that the suspension of normal parts of the college experience is a breach of contract. That seems like it would also be a tough sell. It's a bummer that you didn't get to go to the spring formal and the basketball game, but that doesn't the college promised you those things and didn't deliver.

The stuff with people attempting to argue that they received substandard classes is even less likely to go anywhere. Courts aren't going to decide that you get some money back because your chemistry lab didn't involve making things bubble in person. They don't want to get involved in trying to make pedagogical decisions.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to guess most of these cases are losers and are going to be unceremoniously tossed. For schools refusing to refund room and board, that might be different, because there's a much clearer argument that you paid for something and didn't get it.

I don't disagree, but I can imagine a perfectly legitimate suit being brought, for example, by someone with disabilities which were not, or not properly, accommodated during the transition. Sometimes, as in the McDonald's case, a lawsuit which seems quintessentially American (read: frivolous) is actually about a pretty serious problem. So while my initial reaction is also to dismiss it entirely, I want to keep that reaction in check a little.

[Caracal]

[

I don't disagree, but I can imagine a perfectly legitimate suit being brought, for example, by someone with disabilities which were not, or not properly, accommodated during the transition. Sometimes, as in the McDonald's case, a lawsuit which seems quintessentially American (read: frivolous) is actually about a pretty serious problem. So while my initial reaction is also to dismiss it entirely, I want to keep that reaction in check a little.

Sure, but that is different because the ADA is a specific law that allows people to sue if someone isn't complying with it. That's really different from just suing on the basis that you didn't get what you paid for.

[Katrina Gulliver]

I don't disagree, but I can imagine a perfectly legitimate suit being brought, for example, by someone with disabilities which were not, or not properly, accommodated during the transition.

That's because suits like that are valid (and are filed) during normal times. A more general "I didn't get the kind of teaching I wanted" wouldn't fly under normal circumstances, that's why it's not going to fly now.

[Parasaurolophus]

To be clear, I'm not disputing any of that.

[eigen]

The stuff with people attempting to argue that they received substandard classes is even less likely to go anywhere. Courts aren't going to decide that you get some money back because your chemistry lab didn't involve making things bubble in person. They don't want to get involved in trying to make pedagogical decisions.

That's the argument regarding general education classes to check a science requirement.  People who need to be proficient at certain techniques can show damages, because they will have to retake classes.  Lecture may have been fine, but not actual lab to practice techniques.

Likewise students who were supposed to have performance-based courses in theatre or art like sculpture really didn't get what they paid for and can prove damages.

Professional associations (e.g., ACS) have said that online labs are valid for fulfilling accreditation, which will make it nearly impossible to show damages.

Including fully online-labs for the summer and fall.

[polly_mer]

The stuff with people attempting to argue that they received substandard classes is even less likely to go anywhere. Courts aren't going to decide that you get some money back because your chemistry lab didn't involve making things bubble in person. They don't want to get involved in trying to make pedagogical decisions.

That's the argument regarding general education classes to check a science requirement.  People who need to be proficient at certain techniques can show damages, because they will have to retake classes.  Lecture may have been fine, but not actual lab to practice techniques.

Likewise students who were supposed to have performance-based courses in theatre or art like sculpture really didn't get what they paid for and can prove damages.

Professional associations (e.g., ACS) have said that online labs are valid for fulfilling accreditation, which will make it nearly impossible to show damages.

Including fully online-labs for the summer and fall.

Do you have a link to ACS flat out stating that with zero caveats?   

I ask because that was definitely not the conclusion a few years ago when I was involved with teaching discussions at meetings hosted by ACS, APS, and AAPT.  That's certainly not what I gathered from trying to find fully online undergraduate programs in chemistry, physics, and engineering and finding almost none.

Doing a web search right now indicates that the first online biochemistry degree program was in 2019.  Even early-online adopter Oregon State had only a chemistry minor in 2019 because of the American Chemical Society's recommendation against virtual laboratories.

The places with online courses tends to send kits to students' houses, not just fully virtual.  I'm betting no kits were sent this spring and that few kits will be sent for the newly online lab courses this summer.

Even the ASU biochemistry degree has a summer bootcamp for two semesters of organic chemistry labs, not fully virtual.

[eigen]

I have an email from the head of the Committee on Professional Training.

The only caveat is that the move online has to be due to COVID-19, and that all courses have to have moved online, not just select courses.

So it's not blanket, but all of the situations I've seen meet the two caveats.

Since we're talking about damages from courses moving online due to this, and the professional organization has OK'd virtual labs during this time, that makes it hard for students to argue that they aren't going to be equivalent.

::edit:: I realize you were perhaps taking my comment more broadly, rather than during this particular time. I was discussing it in the context of these lawsuits.

[polly_mer]

I have an email from the head of the Committee on Professional Training.

The only caveat is that the move online has to be due to COVID-19, and that all courses have to have moved online, not just select courses.

That reads more to me like ACS not yanking anyone's accreditation this year for being out of compliance with the ACS requirements.

That's distinct in my mind from endorsing fully-online labs as being adequate for teaching the skills one expects chemists (and related others) to have as a result of taking specific lab courses. 

I wouldn't bet my university lawsuit defense on a pure accreditation matter versus the educational value, especially for spring when people were scrambling instead of fall when perhaps people have managed to put together equivalent kits or scheduled highly accelerated in-person labs to make up the skills.

[eigen]

I have an email from the head of the Committee on Professional Training.

The only caveat is that the move online has to be due to COVID-19, and that all courses have to have moved online, not just select courses.

That reads more to me like ACS not yanking anyone's accreditation this year for being out of compliance with the ACS requirements.

That's distinct in my mind from endorsing fully-online labs as being adequate for teaching the skills one expects chemists (and related others) to have as a result of taking specific lab courses. 

I wouldn't bet my university lawsuit defense on a pure accreditation matter versus the educational value, especially for spring when people were scrambling instead of fall when perhaps people have managed to put together equivalent kits or scheduled highly accelerated in-person labs to make up the skills.

But these lawsuits are about the spring semester.

[polly_mer]

Let me do another shot at this:

Having ACS documents indicating that no department will lose ACS accreditation for putting labs online in the spring/summer/fall of 2020 is great for departments.

However, protecting ACS accreditation has nothing to do with quality of labs that were put online with short notice.  Thus, suing for fraud/breach of contract because the spring labs didn't cover what they were supposed to cover seems reasonable to me, especially with ACS on record for the past decade about how most labs are not acceptable online.

The ACS backing on the educational aspects is likely to be stronger as time goes on.  I am no longer heavily involved in the education discussion groups, but I assume that ACS/AAPT/APS/AICHE/ASME are working hard on how to best adjust for remote labs or accelerated labs with catch-up skill practice for the labs that were cut short in the spring.

Chemists (and related others) are expected to have certain skills.  Not obtaining those skills while still passing the class has led to occasional lawsuits in the past.  I am intimately familiar with a non-science lawsuit in which the student successfully sued because she was demonstrably not prepared for the work that the program had explicitly stated as program outcomes.

[Caracal]

Chemists (and related others) are expected to have certain skills.  Not obtaining those skills while still passing the class has led to occasional lawsuits in the past.  I am intimately familiar with a non-science lawsuit in which the student successfully sued because she was demonstrably not prepared for the work that the program had explicitly stated as program outcomes.

Right, these sorts of breach of contract lawsuits have been more successful against trade schools, not because of any bias against trade schools, but because the sorts of implied or actual promises a trade school makes are much more concrete and specific. If you go to refrigerator repair school and they don't actually teach you how to fix a refrigerator, you probably have a pretty good case. To make a similar argument for breach of contract because classes were moved online, you'd probably have to show that whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking,  that no acceptable substitutes were offered, and that the school didn't take any action to make sure students could still acquire the skill despite the disruption. It would be a tough sell.

[mahagonny]

Chemists (and related others) are expected to have certain skills.  Not obtaining those skills while still passing the class has led to occasional lawsuits in the past.  I am intimately familiar with a non-science lawsuit in which the student successfully sued because she was demonstrably not prepared for the work that the program had explicitly stated as program outcomes.

Right, these sorts of breach of contract lawsuits have been more successful against trade schools, not because of any bias against trade schools, but because the sorts of implied or actual promises a trade school makes are much more concrete and specific. If you go to refrigerator repair school and they don't actually teach you how to fix a refrigerator, you probably have a pretty good case. To make a similar argument for breach of contract because classes were moved online, you'd probably have to show that whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking,  that no acceptable substitutes were offered, and that the school didn't take any action to make sure students could still acquire the skill despite the disruption. It would be a tough sell.

If it happens that way it's not a bias against trade schools, it's a bias in favor of tenure. They are exalted special people, and they will tell us how things are. Some of the same people who would argue against a refund because "whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking doesn't cut" it have been campaigning against online teaching for years, for the reason that it won't be equal the live classroom. Remember the ridicule for "MOOCS?" Well, I'll take whatever comes. but if they're going to have to refund money, that means they need to offer the classroom for the future.

[Caracal]

Chemists (and related others) are expected to have certain skills.  Not obtaining those skills while still passing the class has led to occasional lawsuits in the past.  I am intimately familiar with a non-science lawsuit in which the student successfully sued because she was demonstrably not prepared for the work that the program had explicitly stated as program outcomes.

Right, these sorts of breach of contract lawsuits have been more successful against trade schools, not because of any bias against trade schools, but because the sorts of implied or actual promises a trade school makes are much more concrete and specific. If you go to refrigerator repair school and they don't actually teach you how to fix a refrigerator, you probably have a pretty good case. To make a similar argument for breach of contract because classes were moved online, you'd probably have to show that whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking,  that no acceptable substitutes were offered, and that the school didn't take any action to make sure students could still acquire the skill despite the disruption. It would be a tough sell.

Some of the same people who would argue against a refund because "whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking doesn't cut" it have been campaigning against online teaching for years, for the reason that it won't be equal the live classroom. Remember the ridicule for "MOOCS?" Well, I'll take whatever comes. but if they're going to have to refund money, that means they need to offer the classroom for the future.

Not really sure what your point is. I'm not a big fan of online classes. There's nothing wrong with MOOCS in theory, I just found it silly that they were being promoted as some new breakthrough in education when they are basically just a high tech equivalent of going to the library. 

These court cases are mostly going to be tossed out. Things not being what you would have preferred isn't the basis for a lawsuit

[mahagonny]

Chemists (and related others) are expected to have certain skills.  Not obtaining those skills while still passing the class has led to occasional lawsuits in the past.  I am intimately familiar with a non-science lawsuit in which the student successfully sued because she was demonstrably not prepared for the work that the program had explicitly stated as program outcomes.

Right, these sorts of breach of contract lawsuits have been more successful against trade schools, not because of any bias against trade schools, but because the sorts of implied or actual promises a trade school makes are much more concrete and specific. If you go to refrigerator repair school and they don't actually teach you how to fix a refrigerator, you probably have a pretty good case. To make a similar argument for breach of contract because classes were moved online, you'd probably have to show that whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking,  that no acceptable substitutes were offered, and that the school didn't take any action to make sure students could still acquire the skill despite the disruption. It would be a tough sell.

Some of the same people who would argue against a refund because "whatever changes made deprived you of the ability to get some vital skill that was clearly part of the implied contract for the classes the student was taking doesn't cut" it have been campaigning against online teaching for years, for the reason that it won't be equal the live classroom. Remember the ridicule for "MOOCS?" Well, I'll take whatever comes. but if they're going to have to refund money, that means they need to offer the classroom for the future.

Not really sure what your point is. I'm not a big fan of online classes. There's nothing wrong with MOOCS in theory, I just found it silly that they were being promoted as some new breakthrough in education when they are basically just a high tech equivalent of going to the library. 

These court cases are mostly going to be tossed out. Things not being what you would have preferred isn't the basis for a lawsuit

I would think they would be tossed out in sympathy that the school had no choice but to send everyone home  then did the best they could under the circumstances. But claiming there was no slippage in educational quality would not strengthen our hand in the long run. If we like being on campus that is.
The way administration looks at it of course is that their job is to find money to keep the place running, for the good of society, so once they've found that money, it can't conceivably be anyone else's. Some people would find that arrogant.
I don't see too many academics saying the trade schools offer something different from the university experience without saying they can't offer nearly as much.
Of course having to refund money could well be the last straw that breaks the camel's back and then the college goes out of business. But from the point of view of the consumer, as long as someone wants college, there will be one. I'm not taking sides just saying I understand why the lawsuits are coming. They're not crazy people.