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The University of Waterloo is facing a class action lawsuit seeking refunds for students who were enrolled at the university on March 13, when the campus was forced to shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Class Action Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Thousands of Students
Plaintiff Kate Didiano says she had been enrolled as an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo since the fall of 2016.
Kate filed the tuition refund class action lawsuit on behalf of herself and a proposed Class of individuals enrolled in at least one on-campus course at the University of Waterloo as of March 13. She seeks to represent those who had paid tuition for at least one on-campus course during the Winter 2020 term and those who were enrolled in at least one on-campus course during the Spring 2020 term that was subsequently moved online.
According to the tuition refund class action lawsuit, the University of Waterloo was established in 1954 and most recently had approximately 41,000 students enrolled at the university. The enrolled class reportedly included about 32,000 full-time undergraduate students and 4,600 full-time graduate students.
Tuition and fees for full-time undergraduate students range from about $3,700 per term to about $30,000 per term for international students.
COVID-19 Disrupts University’s Winter Term
The first case of COVID-19 in Canada was reportedly confirmed on Jan. 27. Days later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a “public health emergency of international concern,” and declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.
The University of Waterloo tuition refund class action lawsuit says that the winter term was scheduled to run from Jan. 6 through April 3, and final examinations were to be held between April 8 and April 25.
Kate says she was enrolled in four on-campus courses and one online course during the University of Waterloo’s winter 2020 term.
On March 13, the university’s president emailed students to inform them that on-campus courses would be suspended from March 14 through March 23, and that in-person course activity including final exams would be cancelled.
The email informed students that instructors were pursuing alternative methods to continue course work and exams, and stated that campus operations would continue.
The effect of the university’s decision, as conveyed in the March 13 email, “was a complete cancellation of one week of the twelve lecture weeks scheduled for the March 2020 Term and two additional weeks which were left to the discretion of professors as how and to what extent they would make use of them.”
Class Action Lawsuit: University of Waterloo Fails to Offer Refunds
On March 19, the university’s president sent an email informing students that the course drop deadline to receive a “Withdrawn” notification on their transcripts had been extended to March 30, and the course drop deadline to receive a “Withdrawn/Failure” notification had been extended to April 7.
“The option of withdrawing from courses, even if a full refund of tuition and fees had been offered, was a hollow gesture for the Plaintiff and members of the Class, after the effort expended theretofore in the Winter 2020 Term and in light of the prospect of the potentially prejudicial receipt of a ‘Withdrawn’ notation on their transcripts,” the University of Waterloo class action lawsuit says.
“The plaintiff and the Class Members had a rightful expectation that they could complete the Winter 2020 Term and receive a refund for any and all deprivation of their entitlements under their contracts with the Defendant.”
According to the University of Waterloo tuition refund class action lawsuit, the university did not provide any tuition refund even though their on-campus classes were either cancelled or delivered in a “materially inferior form of online instruction.”
COVID-19 Leads to Widespread Legal Issues
The University of Waterloo is not the first university to face legal action over its failure to refund tuition in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, students from 15 Quebec universities filed an application for authorization seeking partial tuition refunds for the period of time their classes were disrupted by COVID-19.
Parents of students attending private schools in Montreal are also seeking refunds of their school fees that were not reimbursed even though the schools closed on March 13 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a wide array of legal issues on top of those faced by universities. Complaints and lawsuits citing price gouging, false advertisement of “cures,” failure to refund, business interruption insurance, the effects on employees, and treatment of inmates and senior citizens during the COVID-19 crisis have skyrocketed.
Do you think universities should refund students’ tuition amid COVID-19 closures? Are you waiting on a refund for an event or class canceled due to COVID-19? Tell us your story in the comment section below!
Kate is represented by Matthew J. Armstrong.
The University of Waterloo Tuition Refund Class Action Lawsuit is Kate Didiano v. University of Waterloo, Case No. CV-20-00000764-00CP, in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Canada.
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