The Student Room Group

(International) Tuition Fees & Covid-19

I want to address this situation as carefully as possible since I don't want to be misunderstood about merely taking advantage of the situation and end up paying cheaper fees. This is a very serious situation and there are plenty of students, including and especially students like me, who have to pay absurdly-expensive (international) tuition fees and not getting the expected treatment. This will probably be very long but I want to be as thorough as possible and if I say something wrong I expect constructive criticism and advice. Thank you.

Recently, I have seen many student groups talking about how the pandemic has limited our rights as students, this means that what we've been promised at the beginning of the year about having a blended education (RELEVANT face-to-face activities mixed with online education) is being compromised every time the government announces new tiers and restrictions. These f2f activities have been cancelling many times and will still be cancelled during the entirety of term 2 and probably will continue to be like this if the situation doesn't change.

Apparently, this can be considered as a breach of contract between the university and the students due to a variety of reasons such as not being able to access the university's facilities and not having access to the same type of education and experience, as students of previous years, and still being charged the full price. I am aware that reducing the tuition fees (or giving reimburses) for the academic years 2019/20 and 2020/21 has been discussed already by the parliament, however, as far as I understood, they've decided not to order universities to do this because they assured that even though we won't have the same experience, we'll still have the same level of education and will be able accomplish our academic goals having all the resources for achieving this available online.

From the beginning, this seemed very vague to me because how can universities assure that only for having all the ACADEMIC material available online this is enough to achieve our goals? It is so obvious that the social, networking aspect of university is as important as going through the modules satisfactorily, sometimes even more important. If we're not having the chance to put this in practice this year, shouldn't we be charged less? I hear complaints of home and EU students about how expensive their tuition fees are, and if that's the case we shouldn't even start talking about international fees, these are so absurd! Having to pay ~£32K compared to ~£10k is just ridiculous taking into account what we are getting this year.

I seriously considered about putting a stop in my studies and continue in the next academic year. Also, I could speak with the university's student support team about how can I reduce my fees (legally with a lawyer if that comes to be the case) or if I can make a deal about paying in instalments (I'm in an MSc programme of just 1 year) because at the beginning of the year I had the total amount for my studies in full but after several hardships, I'm indeed struggling financially and it seems unfair to just pay up.

What are your thoughts on this? Is there anyone else in the same position?

*Some notes for clarification:
- I know that international tuition fees are related to taxes and that home and EU student's fees are capped by the government due to agreements and investment on education. It is much more complex than this but I am aware and know about it so I don't really appreciate comments regarding this bit.

- There're many angles this can be seen from, the cost of tuition fees in normal circumstances consider access to facilities, professors necessities such as transportation and obviously the cost of having high-skilled and experienced professionals sharing their knowledge in the same room. These physical spaces have to be paid but in these times, we are not using them, the costs of teaching online are greatly reduced and the universities are not guilty of the pandemic but they are in a better position to withstand the consequences and not the students which, in my opinion, are being treated as cash cows.

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