If higher education is a market, we students deserve a Covid-19 refund

A few weeks ago, the University of Cambridge announced that all its lectures would be delivered online until the end of the coming academic year. In an email sent to prospective students such as myself, the institution tried to soften the blow by assuring us that small-scale teaching, such as tutorials and seminars, would continue in person “as much as possible” (ie, subject to government advice). Still, the result is the same: next year’s students lose a key part of their university experience.

As an incoming PhD candidate, I am lucky; doctoral training is largely about research and individual tuition, not lectures or group study. For taught students, however, it is safe to assume that their education will suffer; they will struggle to focus as the lecturers struggle to adapt. Their ability to follow the curriculum will depend on the strength of their broadband connection.

But this issue goes much further than just lectures, affecting the gamut of student life. Will freshers be able to push through crowded student union fairs, signing up for countless societies whose events they will never attend? Will they be able to gather for the famous May balls or earn their blues in sporting events? Will they stay up late in packed libraries during exam season and celebrate its end in a pub? Doubtful.

Of course, none of this uncertainty is the university’s fault. We are in a global crisis and Cambridge is prioritising its students’ (and its staff’s) health. Holding lectures online is the sensible and moral thing to do, and many other universities are being urged on social media to follow suit. The university experience is not worth endangering human life.

Yet I cannot help but remember another time when “university experience” was a popular refrain. Two years ago, I was an MA student at University College London during the pension strikes by members of the University and College Union. Mine was only a one-year degree, so having lectures cancelled even a few times per term made a big difference. Most of us still rallied behind the staff, but a vocal minority – largely consisting of students paying international fees – abhorred what they felt was an impaired education and demanded their money back. UCL’s response? “You are not paying just for your teaching; you are paying for the university experience.”

If that were true, we should now get our money back. Yet, throughout the coronavirus crisis, fretful universities have repeated the categorical message that fees will not be reduced. There are good reasons for this: the health crisis means that returning to teaching-as-usual would be dangerous, if not legally impossible.

In addition, fee reductions would be detrimental to most universities’ finances. Higher education does not live on bread and God’s word alone; we, the students, understand that. Yet, in many countries, education is seen as a public good, and is delivered without staggering fees. In the UK, while students and universities may disagree on what product is being bought and sold – and change their positions according to convenience – it is indisputable that a product is being sold, be it “pure” education or the “university experience”.

The marketisation of higher education has already been discussed to death and it is hardly constructive to review it again. But I do wonder how these messages about online learning and no fee reductions would be communicated if, rather than as paying customers, the students were treated as members of a university community. After all, while students are at university to study, they are also in search of ethics and enlightenment.

Perhaps, rather than categorically refusing us refunds, the universities should come out with a clear and honest admission: “We cannot survive this without your fees, which finance our research and your teaching. We need your help.” Perhaps, as students, we would feel a sense of duty to respond, to keep our universities going through this unprecedented crisis for the common good.

But these are not the decisions we can make as customers, paying, in many cases, more than our annual rent in fees. Our opportunities for financial support are meagre or non-existent, our pastoral care is being stripped to the bare bones, and we see our staff struggle year after year on temporary contracts. How can we feel a sense of community when that community is being chipped away methodically by a ruthlessly efficient system that just about works when everything else is fine but has had its deficiencies laid bare by a global crisis?

By the very market logic that has been shoved down our throats, we, the students, have the right to demand our money back. If we do not, it is because something of higher value has survived this assault. If the universities can learn from this and treat us less like customers and more like partners, perhaps one year of impaired education will not be for nothing.

Maria Magdalena Gajewska is an incoming PhD student at the University of Cambridge.