February 2, 2024 - 10:00am
Within weeks of being sent off campus in the spring of 2020, university students in the US began filing lawsuits. These lawsuits relied mostly on a “breach of contract” premise (i.e. that universities charged tuition and fees for in-person education which they were not providing) or educational malpractice (remote learning is a pale imitation of a real college education and campus experience). But, particularly early on, legal scholars and judges expressed scepticism about these claims.
Last week, however, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute became the most recent in a string of educational institutions to settle a class action lawsuit brought by students over Covid-19 lockdowns, for a sum of $6.5 million. In 2021 Columbia University settled a $12.5 million Covid-19 refund case, while George Washington University settled for $5.4 million over similar claims. Other suits were brought against New York University, American University, the University of Colorado, and Johns Hopkins University: these yielded multimillion-dollar (most between 5-10 million) settlements. Hundreds more such lawsuits are still in progress, as students demand compensation for the subpar education they received, and for lack of access to health clinics, gyms, libraries, tutoring and other services, all while paying for an in-person education.
Initial assumptions that these suits would be dismissed out of hand are clearly proving incorrect. However, one way in which sceptics were correct is that, in most of these settlements, universities admitted no wrongdoing. And the payouts have been small — in many cases just a few hundred dollars per student, after the lawyers are paid and the funds divided up.
Given these facts, then, do they mean anything? $12 million is a drop in the bucket for Columbia University, with its $13.6 billion endowment. The university paid $24 million —twice as much — in a class action suit related to price fixing in 2021.
Despite the surprisingly sparse coverage in mainstream outlets, the settlements are clearly important. Yes, the money is piddly and universities have not admitted that they treated their students abominably, or that they harmed their mental health by banishing them from campus long beyond when they were required to keep them away by public health stay-at-home orders. But the lawsuits could set a precedent for future cases.
This time around, the suits were settled on breach of contract bases, meaning that the courts agreed with the student plaintiffs that forcing them to go remote was a breach of an implied contract, based on tuition and fees paid, for an on-campus experience that universities failed to deliver. It is possible, though, that these suits could open the door for universities to be held liable for more serious harms, and not just for breaching a contract between students and institutions. The negative consequences of forced isolation and online learning are now well-documented, and could play into future lawsuits against universities if this happens again.
Overwhelming evidence shows that college students who attended school online instead of in person performed worse academically and struggled more with their mental health. A study published last spring in the Journal of American College Health, for example, found that college students sent home during Covid-19 reported increased feelings of loneliness, depression, and poorer sleep quality. Another report found that students who drop out are more likely to be unemployed, earn less than peers with higher degrees, and are three times as likely to default on student loans.
The same investigations showed, perhaps most astonishingly, that of 2.6 million students who started college in 2019, 26% of them did not return to school the following year, the highest freshman-to-sophomore year dropout rate since 2012. Unsurprisingly, some of those most affected were low-income students. At Michigan State University, overall first-year retention was up in 2022 to 92%, but the share of returning Pell Grant students was down over 1% to 86%, while first-generation college student retention rates fell by the same amount. Educators have known for years, long before the pandemic, that educational outcomes delivered by online learning are, on average, significantly worse than in-person education.
The fact that the students have won a slew of settlements is important, as is the fact that the tide now seems to have turned in favour of the student litigants. The lawsuits could help establish precedents for larger, more wide-ranging litigation in the future — on the basis of malpractice, for example, for pain and suffering due to emotional and mental harms, or for lost earnings.
In that light, these settlements represent a significant victory, though it would be a stretch to say that the students got their day in court — they did not, at least not financially. Nevertheless, at the very least, universities may pause in future before forcing their students off campus to sit home alone in front of a monitor — and that’s a good thing.
Dr Leslie Bienen works in health care policy and Philip Marks is a third-year university student studying Political Science and Business.
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SubscribeI wonder if parents here in the UK could bring actions against Local Education Authorities, schools and maybe even teaching unions for the damage done to children by their erroneous application of school closures and the below standard provision of remote learning.
Come off it! COVID?
It NEVER happened!
That would be really great indeed
I wish people in South Africa would do the same. Of course they would get nowhere with our government, because you know by now that the people who count live in Gaza.
“Despite the surprisingly sparse coverage in mainstream outlets, the settlements are clearly important. ”
This is the first time I’ve heard about this.
Makes one wonder why, doesn’t it. A rational person might think the press would such things, well, newsworthy.
Jim, for sparse read ‘non-existent’ when it comes to MSM anti-Covid narrative coverage.
Rancid as American higher education has become, this is like blaming automakers for drunk drivers or gun manufacturers for criminals. The academy dutifully fell in line behind “the experts” who called for and pushed lockdowns and other ineffectual tactics. One of my nephews moved back home, reasoning that if he was going to be confined to a room, it might as well be a nicer one with a 24-hour kitchen.
Any reckoning needs to involve people in an official capacity, the ones who engineered this crime against reason and common sense. One might forgive their immediate bow to safetyism in the early days, but that grace period passed quickly when it became crystal clear that younger, healthy people were at almost no risk.
When you have a contagious virus that is spread through the air, almost the only way to limit its spread is to isolate people from each other. There is nothing very new about quarantine. That is common sense as well as the opinion who have studied those things. Without lockdowns, the early peaks would probably have been far worse, both in terms of deaths and also in the harm they did to the economy. The biggest mistake that was made in the UK was imposing the first lockdown too late, and then opening everything up too early so there was a huge second wave. Eventually, of course, vaccines came to the rescue. But I’d guess that you don’t believe in vaccines either. The age of unreason is back with a vengeance.
David if you would just drop the snarkiness for a moment, the point being made is one you should consider. Whereas quarantine does provide the safety you describe, the issue is why 100% of society, even and especially children, had to pay a crippling economic, medical, and career-busting cost to protect the 2% of people at high risk, where the vast majority of deaths who were people with existing comorbidities.
As for ‘unreason’, the claims that the COVID vaccines were perfectly safe defied reason, because it was completely impossible to know what long term effects would be. Science is about truth and accuracy. You might defend it by saying that to get the vaccines accepted, they had to lie about the safety, which is the case, but that doesn’t square with the hideous invective poured on vaccine dissenters, who used their reason to say, “How could you possibly know that the vaccines are safe?” and “What else are you lying to the public about?”
What contagious virus are you talking about?
Come on, that’s just being silly. There was a contagious virus, it’s still around, but it was not the Black Death
Do you still believe this utter rubbish?. Actually the amount of social interaction declined hugely when government advice was given, a week before the official lockdown which criminalised basic freedoms (and indeed my ability to assist my mother – I was not her “carer” but she needed family support nonetheless. People would have mostly sensibly adapted without the law getting involved.
There is no correlation at all between excess deaths from covid and the severity of legal lockdown restrictions. Sweden has the lowest excess deaths rate in Europe. And crucially there was – and still is – not any attempt whatever to even assess the enormous costs in other areas – including economic and financial – this has permanently damaged our economy and public finances, willingness to work, mental health, education and not least – every other health condition including cancers..The fact that this ludicrous enquiry still hasn’t asked let alone answered those basic questions is a complete scandal.
Your analogies seem pretty off the mark. The universities and colleges were agents, and went further, earlier than they were required to even by the disastrous lockdown rules imposed. Of course they should be held responsible.
This is just far right nonsense. No one was forced out of attending school or college, anymore than anyone was forced to get vaccinated.
Tell the people who lost their jobs that no one was coerced into vaccination. And yeah, when the physical plant is shut down and entry is prohibited, that’s pretty much being “forced out of attending.”
That’s just misinformation picked up from social media.
No, it isn’t. It’s hard fact. From doctors and nurses to cops and soldiers, people lost their jobs for refusing to take the vaccine.
Here are multiple stories on the subject. Maybe you’ll learn something:
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/27/1144323505/vaccine-mandates-lifted-sanitation-new-york-city-workers
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-faces-spate-of-lawsuits-from-workers-fired-for-refusing-covid-vaccines/
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/city-of-chicago-employees-fired-for-refusing-covid-vaccine-must-be-reinstated-judge-rules/3124419/
Barring approval of the post with three links to stories talking about separate cases of people being fired for refusal, consult your nearest Google. From doctors and nurses to cops and soldiers, it happened. No matter how much you want to pretend it didn’t.
Sorry Alex. I just wanted to see what it was like to be a gaslit lockdown apologist. Horrible, but then I knew that already. Yesterday on a forum elsewhere I questioned a poster’s enthusiasm for Chomsky, by pointing out the great man’s enthusiasm for locking the unvaxxed out of society, even food stores. He replied by saying that because Chomsky was speaking in April 2021 when (apparantly) it was unclear how things would pan out, it was disrespectful of me to mention his faux pas. I’m still not sure if he was being ironic or not. He made no comment though when I mentioned Chomsky’s association with Epstein.
Well, you got me.
Chomsky’s little credibility still resides in his theory of manufactured consent/dissent. He revealed his limits with his stance on the vaccines and when he joined/shilled for the ‘settle for Biden’ camp.
If you’re saying no-one had a gun held to their head and ordered to take the vaccine, then yes, no-one was forced. Unfortunately, I was required to have proof of vaccination in order to travel for work. Yes, I could have stuck to my principles and resigned, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. The day after I took the vaccine, all the nerve endings in my lower back were so inflamed that I could barely walk.
I can accept that mistakes were made, but am averse to others telling me I am far-right or delusional for questioning lockdowns and mandates. The worst thing is that despite all evidence to the contrary people are still doubling down on their insistence that bullying skeptics and locking up entire populations was the correct thing to do.
Yes, totally agree with you.
“This time around, the suits were settled on breach of contract bases, meaning that the courts agreed with the student plaintiffs that forcing them to go remote was a breach of an implied contract, based on tuition and fees paid, for an on-campus experience that universities failed to deliver.”
That seems like a misinterpretation of what happened. Based solely on what I read in this article, the courts (more importantly, juries) didn’t agree with anyone about the issues in these cases.
These cases evidently survived the possibility of a motion to dismiss, meaning the judge(s) agreed these cases weren’t so lacking in substance, or a cognizable legal claim, that they should be immediately dismissed (that is a very low bar). But there was no trial, no judgment, and no admission of guilt.
The unanswered question in this article is why the plaintiffs’ attorneys settled for so little damages? Did they, for example, recognize their case was weak and a large jury verdict unlikely? And these test cases were based on the fairly well-defined law of contract, with provable economic damages, compared to more nebulous claims of negligence resulting in emotional harm.
I believe the universities acted badly during the pandemic, like so many other institutions, but I’m not convinced these rather lukewarm breach-of-contract cases have opened the floodgates to much more lucrative negligence claims.
Ironically, part of the rationale for keeping the students on lockdown beyond what the government mandated was probably to avoid similar liability lawsuits from students who got COVID while attending college.
I taught on-ground classes at a US state university starting in the fall of 2020. I was one of the few faculty that was teaching on-ground and I did it because I felt in-person teaching is the best for students. Almost all of my students were paying to live on campus in dorms, and my class was one of the few classes that they attended in person. Many of them were angry that they and their parents were paying to live on campus while most of their classes were online. All of them would have loved to get some of their money back.