You’ve probably seen the headlines: University College London (UCL) settled a massive lawsuit for £21 million with college students who got an inferior education due to Covid-19 pandemic closures. That’s roughly $26 million in US dollars with each student of the 6,000+ students represented getting about £3,270 (around $4,100). Meanwhile, in the US, Penn State—which had our largest settlement to date at $17 million—paid out just $236 per student. So why are British students receiving roughly 17 times more money than American students when learning disruptions were far more severe and longer-lasting in the US?
The answer lies in fundamental differences in how the UK and US law treat students. Put simply: UK students got Zoom learning and were compensated for overpaying. US students got Zoom learning with no legal pathway to get their partial refund.
The British students have a secret weapon that US students just don’t have; the Consumer Rights Act 2015. It explicitly treats students as consumers and universities as businesses providing a service. Under this law, if you pay for a premium service but receive a basic service, you’re entitled to a price reduction—period. The law says services must be performed with “reasonable care and skill,” and if they are not, consumers are eligible to get their money back for the difference in value.
Importantly, the Consumer Rights Act overrides vague clauses that allow claims for “We can’t be held responsible if something extraordinary happens” to escape responsibility. This is precisely what happened in US cases; the universities used “reservation of rights” language buried in student handbooks and government lockdown orders as valid defenses. Whereas in the UK, consumer protection law says: nice try, but students are consumers, and you still owe them a refund.
The UK students made valid legal claims, the UK courts agreed, and the rest is precedent.
In the US, over 300 lawsuits were filed against 70+ US colleges and universities. Students alleged breach of contract and unjust enrichment—basically arguing they were promised in-person education, didn’t get it, and deserved a partial refund.
Only it is not that simple to get in the US.
While the US has consumer protection laws—both at the federal level (the FTC Act) and state level (UDAP laws in all states), they don’t specifically apply to education the way the UK’s Consumer Rights Act does.
Some college students did try including consumer protection claims in their lawsuits—particularly in California, which has strong consumer protection statutes. USC’s lawsuit, for example, included violations of California’s Business & Professions Code. But these claims were always secondary to the breach of contract arguments. Why? Because successful student claims under US consumer protection laws simply don’t exist.
US lawsuits did not and will likely never result in UK-level settlements because judges refuse to assess educational quality, and they recognize “It is not our fault” defenses. US courts are extremely reluctant to assess the quality of education to determine if students got what they paid for academically. In other words, they don’t want to be in the business of deciding whether your online chemistry class was as good as your in-person class. US courts also give enormous weight to “It is not our fault” defenses. Universities argued that the pandemic was extraordinary, and given that the government advised us to close, you can’t hold us responsible for converting to an online learning model.
So where do US college students stand? Many of the early cases got dismissed outright with courts ruling that the students had no case. Others are still dragging on many years after they were filed, and some have settled.
As of today, about 30+ universities have settled—mostly to avoid the cost of continuing litigation but lest you think that these settlements caused a dent in the budgets of US colleges and universities, think again. Most of these settlements were funded by CARES Act dollars. The federal government gave universities $76 billion in Covid relief funds through the CARES Act and subsequent legislation. They eventually put a deadline on that money: spend it by September 2023 or lose it. So many universities scrambled to use that federal money to quietly settle tuition lawsuits starting in 2021 and continuing through the September 2023 deadline.
For reference, the top 10 US Covid tuition settlements are as follows:
- Penn State – $17 million / 72,000 students = $236 per student
- Columbia University – $12.5 million = ~$350 per student (estimated)
- USC – $10 million = ~$250 per student (estimated)
- University of La Verne – $8.9 million = ~$300 per student (estimated)
- University of Pittsburgh – $7.85 million = ~$200 per student (estimated)
- Johns Hopkins – $6.6 million = ~$300 per student (estimated)
- University of Delaware – $6.3 million = “several hundred dollars”
- George Washington University – $5.4 million = $193 per student
- American University – $5.44 million = $400-475 per student
- University of Colorado – $5 million = ~$250 per student (estimated)
Ever heard of any of these settlements? Of course you haven’t. The mainstream media completely ignored them. Penn State paid $17 million to 72,000 students in February 2025. This is an important story about university accountability, student rights, and Covid disruption and yet crickets from the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York Times.
To find the settlements, you would have to search higher education trade publications (Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education), student newspapers at the affected universities, local news stories in the cities where universities are located or legal news websites that track class action lawsuits.
Meanwhile, the UCL £21 million settlement went viral.
Do not underestimate how influential this intentional lack of mainstream coverage was in helping the settlements stay low. First, it kept college students in the dark. If you didn’t attend one of these 30 universities, you didn’t know you could sue, and you surely had no idea other students were getting money back. Second, it prevented the kind of momentum that UK students built. The UCL settlement made major headlines, which drove 30,000 more students to sign up for claims at other universities within days after the settlement was announced.
You can practically hear the US university legal meetings—settle quietly, use CARES Act dollars, and make it disappear.
Another major reason the UK case was so successful is that the UK students formed a Student Group Claim, a coordinated legal campaign that signed up students across 36 universities—eventually reaching 194,000 students total (now over 230,000 after 30,000 signed up days following the UCL settlement). In other words, the collective action of the students rather than several individually scattered lawsuits made an enormous difference in their case.
This mass coordination created enormous pressure on the universities. UCL couldn’t just quietly settle with a handful of students and make the problem go away. Initiated by a large coalition of students and backed by strong legal arguments under the Consumer Rights Act, UCL didn’t stand a chance.
The momentum is just beginning in the UK. The settlement has created a precedent that is rippling across the entire UK higher education system. Other universities are now looking at UCL’s £21 million payout and are quite concerned. They’re facing similar claims from thousands of students. They know the Consumer Rights Act applies to them, and they know the students will win.
Legal experts estimate that anywhere between £100-200 million ($125-250 million) could be spent on the total payout across UK universities in the next few years. For additional context, that would be 2-4 times larger than the combined total of all 30+ US settlements put together.
The deadline for UK students to file claims is September 2026 (six years from the breach under the Limitation Act 1980) which explains the recent wave of new claims as the other universities try to comprehend what this means for them.
Back to students in the US. Here’s the cold hard truth. Even if the legal arguments existed, getting courts to recognize students as consumers with UK-level rights would require either: new federal or state legislation explicitly classifying students as consumers, a dramatic shift in how judges interpret existing consumer protection laws, or state Attorneys General bringing enforcement actions. Don’t bet on any of these happening anytime soon.
US colleges and universities are powerful institutions with significant lobbying influence. They will fight to the death before they let pesky college students rock the sacred principle of academic freedom deeply embedded in US law.
The contrast between the UK and US settlements tells us something important about how our legal system treats students. In the UK, when universities couldn’t deliver the education students paid for, the law said: “Students are consumers. They’re entitled to a refund for the difference in value.” Simple and fair.
In the US, courts told students that education is special, and courts are in no position to assess quality. Plus, the pandemic wasn’t their fault, and they had no choice but to act accordingly. So please take this pittance and go away.
The UCL settlement is remarkable not just for the money but for what it represents. It says that students have rights as consumers, that universities can’t hide behind “It’s not our fault” claims when they fail to deliver, and that organized collective action can win against powerful institutions.
American students fought hard in their lawsuits, but the bottom line is this. US college students lack robust consumer protection laws and courts willing to reverse decades of precedent.
And because mainstream media has largely ignored the victories, most students never even knew settlements were happening. Universities paid out over $100 million combined—much of it with federal CARES Act dollars—and it barely made a ripple in the national conversation.
But the UK students had something we don’t: a law that explicitly says students are consumers entitled to fair value. Without that, US students are trying to win a game with very different rules—rules that strongly favor colleges and universities.
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