If University Lecturers decide to go on strike for a week, can students claim a weeks worth of tuition fees back?

 

Interesting question!
Do students have a contract with the university laying out terms and conditions?
Could well be a clause exactly for that case!

 

Not sure if they ever sign anything to that effect.
But its not like a salary - the students are paying for a service, if that service is not given, can they refuse to pay (or claim their money back for the non-service)
Is it like ordering a meal in a restaurant where you pay up front and then receive no meal at all?

 

I agree, and maybe the students would have ground to reclaim fees for lectures that are not given.
It all comes down to the contractual obligations of each university with regards to what level of service they are required to supply and what exactly is included in the tuition fees. May well be a gray area with lots of different education laws created over many years and each individual university's own regulations.

 

Do season ticket holders get a partial refund if train drivers go on strike, or if services are cancelled?

 

Train commuters are eligible for compensation, does vary from company to company with season tickets though

But the principal stands, students are the customer and they are being denied the service they have paid for. Too right there should be compensation.

I also believe they should be compensated for being ‘sold’ a course* that has no future employment prospect (as often claimed in average prospectus) ...if the modules and course contents aren’t aligned with what that industry wants in a employee, or is outdated, incomplete or of such a low level that new graduates require further tuition and/or training, then that university has failed its job to provide the correct education for its students to gain credible career prospects. The university should be sanctioned and students compensated.

*To clarify I mean courses that are relevant to getting a job in the real world and not one of those mickey-mouse degrees that are arty farty or philosophical; These probably should incur higher ‘tax’ fees to subsidise courses that actually have real world worth.

 

I'll do some digging on the net to see what I can find

 

Alot of Scottish universities seem to have finished lectures at this time of year, so most students are revising, according to my lad at Edinburgh

 

With due respect, that's a load of nonsense. Many employers require recruits with a degree, and are not fussed what the subject is. Hence my niece, with a degree in History, is now a fully qualified chartered accountant, another niece, with an English degree, is a successful pension advisor. I myself did a degree in Economics in the early seventies, and I ended up as a self-employed production technician in the music touring industry. University isn't always vocational training, and isn't supposed to be.

 

Not nonsense from my neck of the woods.

Guess its where you graduate from and if you live in areas of decline. Also to mention those employers after giving a graduate that job finding out they are utterly unprepared for the career they are supposed to have been educated for; A good employer will bring them up to scratch which they shouldn’t need to be doing. Its a common conversational moan amongst colleagues and customers (In fact I was headhunted last week because the quality of graduates just isn’t up to it and he hasn’t the time to get them up to speed and needs someone already up to speed to help sort them out).

Certainly the ex-polytechnics have a lot to answer for with some of this as well as colleges.

Furthermore apprenticeships...we actually outrightly refused to take on apprentices from several particular colleges because they were that poor, not students, but what they had been taught; Instead we insisted them to transfer to a better college. Suffice to say the one college has since closed after racking up a few million of debt.

 

Furthermore, what is the point of doing a degree in English or History if the vocation you end up doing has barely any relevance? Sure, for personal wisdom, fine. Or maybe that dream job of being a publisher or archiologist is a rare and perhaps over-subscribed vocation? Was the original intent to go into those areas as a career, and if so did the educational establishment’s prospectus advertise good job prospects in these areas?

I know a lot of us never end up in the career we expected to after leaving school/college/uni, but because this the norm doesn’t mean it right to offer courses that fall well below the standard a employer should expect from a graduate with a qualification in a relevant field.

 

Simple. Taking a degree in one of the harder academic subjects demonstrates the ability to absorb and apply knowledge.

As I think someone already pointed out, degrees in academic disciplines are rarely intended to be purely vocational. It's about taking on the skills of knowing how to research a subject and apply critical thinking to it, not proving you know every fact about it.
Fair point though about courses that claim to be vocational, but don't in reality prepare the student for a life in the relevant field.

 

Transferable skills - so a degree in History would show that you are good at researching data or interpreting information to draw a conclusion which you can evidence. So legal work, HR etc etc