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Students demand money for mis-sold degrees

Students have demanded blanket "tuition fee" refunds telling the competitions watchdog they have been mis-sold degrees.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has received letters from a group of students’ unions urging it to, “take action to uphold students’ rights” over tuition fees and rent payments during the pandemic.

Backed by student leaders at 19 universities across Britain the open letter calls on the regulator to help students asking for refunds as a result of Covid-19 disruption and urges the regulator to, “explain to students how they can prove that the ‘quality’ of their course has not met the required standards for full tuition”.

Signed by student leaders from Oxford, Cambridge and several other leading universities the letter says, “Nobody understands what the Government means by poor quality courses, and the language seems to blame the academics delivering courses for lost education when it is the unavoidable result of the pandemic and ‘blended learning’ being mis-sold by universities.”

The plea follows confirmation from the Department for Education that approximately half of university students in England will not be able to return to campus for in-person teaching until May 17 at the earliest.

The letter says, “Hundreds of thousands of students have been left with no viable route to redress on any meaningful scale, and as far as we can make out the CMA has completely ignored the issue.”

The CMA said, “We are sympathetic to the situation many students find themselves in, but this is a complex area legally and consumer enforcement action may not be the best or quickest solution for students’ problems”. 

By contrast "Universities UK" stated, “Universities and their staff have done all they can to help students progress with their studies and meet their learning outcomes.”

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