A group of 296 Indian students who studied in the UK between 2017 & 2022 has recently filed a lawsuit against their British universities due to the disruption they faced during the Covid pandemic and university lecturer strikes.
If successful, the students could each receive tens of thousands of pounds, against the approx. £40,000 that they paid, in compensation for the difference between what they were promised that is in-person teaching and access to facilities versus what they received, that is the online courses.
Over 110,000 more students have also instructed law firms Harcus Parker and Asserson, via the website StudentGroupClaim.co.uk, to seek compensation, while hundreds of thousands more are expected to join the Student Group Claim.
The students argue that they paid full fees for a university experience that they did not receive and that universities breached their contracts with them. One student, Arunima Ghosh, paid for her MSc in applied bioscience by offering her home as collateral but was unable to conduct experiments to research the effects of chemotherapy on cancerous cells due to lab closures during the pandemic, putting her at a disadvantage when applying for top jobs. “I have nothing,” she said. While the European students were allowed to make use of the labs for their projects, she was told her visa could not be extended. “I paid all this money and received nothing that was promised,” she said.
According to Ryan Dunleavy, a partner at Harcus Parker, “Indian nationals are probably the second-largest client base for us in this case. Around 300 have returned to India but there are probably several thousand more Indians in other countries taking part in the claim. These Indian students spent an awful lot of money and got very little back for it and feel very disgruntled. In 2020 to 2021 teaching was shunted online in a haphazard manner and physical facilities were largely removed, yet they were paying these huge international fees to be given a correspondence course.”
A high court hearing took place on May 24 against University College London (UCL), while 17 other UK universities have received letters before action.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Universities UK stated, “We are proud of how universities adapted and managed in adverse circumstances.” Professor Kathleen Armour of UCL highlighted, “Our staff worked tirelessly to make all UCL premises as safe as possible and ensured a high-quality academic experience.”
