As UK higher education turns inexorably into a fee-paying, non-state-aided system, its students, institutions and lawyers are all increasingly coming to view the undergraduate-university relationship as a contractual one. With individual students and their parents now having to spend hard-earned savings, or borrowing, to pay for rising top-up fees, the relationship in law now resembles a contract for services, in which the purchaser is entitled to sue the provider for damages should the services prove to be sub-standard or not as advertised. Already, several potentially landmark cases have settled on their way to the courts, with payments of at least £30,000 being made to dissatisfied 'customers' (e.g. Daily Telegraph 31/7/02).
Supposedly cash-strapped Oxford, where annual top-up fees as high as £15,000 have been mooted [The Times 27/9/01, THES 13/2/04], privatisation is openly being discussed [THES 17/10/03, Sunday Telegraph 10/10/04], and a switch from domestic undergraduate intake to the more lucrative overseas and post-graduate markets is already underway [The Times 25/1/05], recently became the first UK university to counter this growing legal threat with the announcement that, as of next September, all of its students will be required to sign a formal contract with their university and college [The Times 31/1].
The contract*, which has been drafted by Michael Beloff QC, President of Trinity, and approved by the Conference of Colleges, will inter alia legally oblige Oxford students to attend all their specified lectures and tutorials, a condition which at once provoked a flurry of amazed and amused articles by various commentators in the national press [Germaine Greer, Frank Furedi, Howard Jacobsen] and, naturally enough, some intensive discussion within Oxford's JCRs and Student Union. The OUSU points out that the proposed contract, whose chief purpose is obviously 'defensive' (i.e. to offer an escape for the university or college, should it find itself being sued), places the institution under no reciprocal obligations (e.g. to provide adequate teaching and accommodation) - a point which in any case might render the contract void in law - and has countered by producing its own Students' Charter. Akme notes that arguably the most important and potentially contentious institutional obligation - the competent and fair setting, marking and grading of examinations - has so far been omitted from OUSU's charter, but doubtless their lawyers are working on this.
With the battle lines drawn and a lawyers' (law students'?) field-day in prospect, Akme, with its own extensive and successful experience in the field of suing the universiity, is pleased to launch an entirely new and unique national resource for all students contemplating such legal action: a free online archive of the most significant cases and other materials in this exciting, rapidly-expanding area of UK law.
* Oxford's proposed contract (pdf) can be accessed via the OUSU website introduction.