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BREACH OF CONTRACT SUITS BY STUDENTS AGAINST POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: CAN THEY SUCCEED?
Abstract
Law suits by students against colleges and universities are not a new phenomenon; case decisions have been reported regularly for almost a century. In the last fifteen years, however, the number of cases brought has burgeoned and they have become subsumed into the broader framework of student consumerism. Today contract suits are one major avenue used by students to attempt to develop greater protections from perceived administrative unfairness. This study initially reviews the larger context in which present-day contract suits exist. The complaints of students fall into two major categories--information disclosure and fair practice. The reported abuses have included misleading statements by colleges to prospective and enrolled students, inconsistency of institutions in following their own rules, and the failure of colleges to articulate rules by which students and the institution are governed until after a violation has occurred. The consumer protection attack has several prongs of varying strength. Federal regulation is in the process of virtually pre-empting the field of tuition and fee disputes. State regulation of college practices has been relatively weak, while voluntary institutional efforts have varied among colleges. Common law suits alleging negligence and misrepresentation have been frequent at both the public school and college levels. Their emergence is recent and their success is muted thus far, although they hold promise of offering a strong avenue for change in the future. Contract suits can be framed to state a cause of action. The elements of the suits and the arguments of both parties have stayed remarkably constant from the oldest cases to the present. Today contract actions are the most frequent of the lawsuit prongs of student consumerism. Overall their success rate is not high, but a review of recent cases shows a wide variation in student successes according to the kind of factual dispute the courts are asked to resolve. In tuition and fee disputes, students sometimes emerge victorious. Lawsuits challenging academic decisions are, on the other hand, unlikely to succeed. Contract decisions are consistent with court decisions based on other theories where academics are concerned; the courts simply will not intrude into the academic decision-making processes of schools and colleges, as, for example, where grading or academic retention is concerned. There are three likely exceptions to this aversion to involvement in the academic life of the institution. (1) Colleges will be held to particularized promises made to individual students. (2) A very new kind of contract case--challenges to rapid termination of academic programs in which students are already enrolled--has to date met with total success for students, although the number of cases is yet small. (3) While promising, too few cases have likewise used contract law as the basis for an attack on procedures for disciplinary or academic dismissals to ascertain a trend. The theory of contract law appears to be suitable to the resolution of student disputes with colleges. Yet the results of actual contract litigation, in general, are not encouraging to students. Critics point out that the problems lie not with the contract law doctrines themselves, but with the courts' selective application of the doctrines and especially the reluctance of courts to use newer concepts such as unconscionability. Whatever the reasons, courts seem willing to accept and enforce as contracts specific agreements governing limited areas, but resist attempts to establish contact as the overall framework of the college-student relationship.
Subject Area
Higher education
Recommended Citation
JENNINGS, EILEEN KAREN, "BREACH OF CONTRACT SUITS BY STUDENTS AGAINST POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: CAN THEY SUCCEED?" (1980). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8105842.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8105842