On whether students should get refunds: good points here & in replies that some may well feel their experience has fallen short, but staff have worked harder if anything, & without govt bailout unis can’t afford it. Covid has exposed some of the contradictions in the fees system. https://twitter.com/luiseach/status/1361935983239913472

For instance: students do pay for a service and of course that has been provided as far as possible. But also university is more than a service: for many it’s a really important stage for social development, network building, personal growth etc.

These are not benefits that a customer (as students now effectively are!) directly pays for, nor that a university directly provides. They are concomitant & depend on variables like who you meet & what you choose to do. Institutions can foster opportunities but not guarantee them

For many of us they are essential to the experience. I received some excellent teaching at university (and some terrible teaching). But the whole experience, including being part of a community with academics & other students, was formative.

These enormous benefits of university experience are not covered by the tuition fee. Yet they are part of the reason so many students do pay the huge fees and do not, under usual circumstances, opt for a much cheaper online course instead.

So there’s a mismatch here between the service that can be guaranteed to a customer and the experience that will be hoped for by a student. Students have lost out this year, as students. But as customers their service has been provided. How do you compensate?

Meanwhile, every academic I know has run themselves ragged trying to provide the best possible experience under extremely difficult circumstances. Plus many of them are very precariously employed. No one wins.

Already a long thread but adding this because it keeps coming up in responses: arguments about service provision (“but students are implicitly promised F2F teaching, facilities etc”) are the point! Fees mean this becomes a legalistic argument on narrow terms. That’s the problem.

And Steve has hit the nail on the head. The argument becomes about fees and compensation between customer and service provider. The government could and probably should step in here, but is content to allow this to happen https://twitter.com/stevexe42/status/1361957982955798530

I’m not here to litigate precise details of what students were offered and received. I’m here to bemoan that an outcome of the fees system is that we are talking about this enormous crisis and loss, and how to deal with it, in these terms.