By Matthew Santoni

Law360 (May 12, 2020, 5:24 PM EDT) -- Students at the University of Pittsburgh have joined a slew of suits against colleges seeking refunds for tuition, housing costs and student fees they paid toward a spring semester cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a proposed class action lawsuit in Pennsylvania federal court.

In a complaint that was filed Friday and made public Monday, undergraduate students Claire Hickey and Akira Kirkpatrick said the university had collected tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, housing and meal costs, as well as mandatory student fees for facilities and activities, but closed the campus, canceled in-person classes and switched to an allegedly inferior online instruction model in late March in order to quell the potential spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Plaintiffs and the members of the class have paid for tuition for a first-rate education and educational experience, with all the appurtenant benefits offered by a first-rate university, and were provided a materially deficient and insufficient alternative," the complaint said. "Plaintiffs and the class have paid fees for services and facilities which are simply not being provided; this failure also constitutes a breach of the contracts entered into by plaintiffs and the class with the university."

Hickey and Kirkpatrick sought to represent a class of an estimated 19,200 undergraduate students who had paid tuition and fees for the spring 2020 semester, and made claims against the university for breach of contract and unjust enrichment. They sought prorated refunds for the tuition and fees, as well as any housing costs the university did not refund for students who stayed on-campus after April 3.

The University of Pittsburgh, also known just as "Pitt," is a private but "state-related" university, meaning that it gets some annual funding from the state of Pennsylvania and has a few state-appointed members on its board of trustees.

The suit said Pitt charged between $18,000 and $42,000 in tuition for the spring 2020 semester and an average of about $12,000 for housing and dining plans for students who lived on-campus. Students also paid at least three mandatory fees, totaling about $370 per semester, which gave them access to student activities, health services, recreational facilities and sports activities, the suit said.

But as coronavirus spread to Pennsylvania, the university postponed the resumption of classes after the end of spring break and urged students to avoid coming back to on-campus housing if possible. Instruction was moved to an online-only format for the rest of the semester, even for classes in areas where in-person instruction and laboratory time is especially crucial, the lawsuit said.

The students' lawsuit argued that the online classes being offered for the rest of the semester were inferior, and not the quality in-person instruction that their tuition had paid for.

Classes were mostly presented as pre-recorded lectures, without questions or interactions between students and faculty. Without access to common labs and libraries the students were deprived of other crucial elements of learning their course materials, the lawsuit said.

"Access to facilities such as libraries, laboratories, computer labs, and study rooms are also integral to a college education," the complaint said. "Substantial and materials parts of the basis upon which the University of Pittsburgh can charge the tuition it charges are not being provided."

A similar lawsuit claiming that online classes were inferior had been filed against New Jersey's Seton Hall University May 5. Another suit claimed that the University of Southern California was "profiting" by not offering students refunds for tuition and fees, students in Florida's state university system sought a refund of their fees for canceled on-campus services, and other suits targeted Columbia and Cornell for the closures of the Ivy League schools.

Pitt stated that it would offer refunds of housing and meal costs on a prorated basis for students depending on when they moved off-campus. Students who stayed after April 3 would not get any refund, the suit said.

"There are also members of the class who were unable to leave the campus prior to April 4, 2020," the complaint said. "These members of the class should not be penalized by the university and are entitled to a pro-rata refund of housing and dining charges for the remaining days of the Spring 2020 semester after these students left."

Despite students paying for services with their various fees, the complaint said the student health center, sports and recreation facilities and sports and fitness programs were all shut down.

In what the suit called a "tacit acknowledgment" that it was improper to collect the fees without giving students the benefits they paid for, the university waived those fees for students enrolling in summer-term courses.

The students' breach-of-contract claim said that by accepting their money, the university had agreed to provide them with the benefits of an in-person, on-campus education.

The suit also said the university had been unjustly enriched by retaining the students' money and not providing the paid-for facilities and services.

"Despite a pandemic that forced a dramatic shift in operating status at Pitt, and in nearly every facet of society, our faculty and staff worked tirelessly and successfully to deliver a world-class education for our students this semester," university spokesperson Kevin Zwick told Law360 Tuesday. "We believe that our decisions regarding refunds were appropriate, and we intend to establish this moving forward."

Counsel for the students did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Hickey and Kirkpatrick are represented by Gary F. Lynch, Edward W. Ciolko and and Kelly K. Iverson of Carlson Lynch LLP, and Jeffrey A. Klafter and Seth R. Lesser of Klafter Olson & Lesser LLP.

Counsel information for the University of Pittsburgh was not immediately available.

The case is Hickey et al. v. University of Pittsburgh, case number 2:20-cv-00690, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

--Editing by Steven Edelstone

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