See you in court

Student complaints procedures need to be updated to cope with a marketised system—and help universities avoid legal action.

It was a news article that first prompted me to try to help the students whose classes were cancelled earlier this year during the industrial action by the University and College Union. The article, published in The Times, said that more than 100,000 students across the UK had signed petitions demanding that their universities compensate them financially for lost teaching time.

I did some quick arithmetic. With tuition fees of £9,250 a year and around 10 per cent of the teaching year cancelled, each student might expect to receive around £900 in compensation. For 100,000 students, that would be £90 million.