A Detroit-area law firm has filed lawsuits in the Michigan Court of Claims, seeking refunds for tuition, room and board and fees for the COVID-19 shortened semester on behalf of students at Michigan State University, Wayne State University, University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.
The lawsuits argue that tuition should be less for online training than for in-person classroom education and that the costs of housing, meals and fees should be reduced on a pro-rated basis when those services are not being provided.
“These students are not objecting to the shift to online classes or to leaving university housing,” said David Fink, managing partner of Fink Bressack, a law firm with officers in Detroit and Bloomfield Hills. “They do object to paying for the classes they are not getting and paying room and board when they no longer live on campus.
“Many of these students and their families have taken out loans to pay the high costs of an on-campus education. Without a full refund, they will be paying interest for something they did not receive.”
The schools have failed to refund any portion of tuition payments, Fink said, despite the shift to online classes.
In addition, he said, after urging students to leave university housing with more than 40 percent of the semester remaining, none of these schools has agreed to provide complete pro-rated refunds of charges for housing and for meals.
“A landlord would never expect a tenant to pay rent when a building is no longer safe to occupy, and no restaurant would expect you to pay for meals you do not receive,” Fink said. “But that’s exactly what these schools seem to expect.”
A semester of tuition at these schools ranges from approximately $7,000 for in-state students to more than $25,000 for out-of-state students, according to the lawsuits.
None of the schools targeted in the lawsuit has agreed to provide tuition refunds that account for the significant differences in value between in-person and online classes, Fink said.
“While all of these schools are understandably trying to address a difficult financial situation, the lawsuits seek to protect those who can least afford to bear this cost — the students,” Fink said. “This case is about fairness. The question is who should bear the financial cost of this unfortunate situation — the students or the university?”
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