Sue the Bastards!

A remarkable aspect of consumerism is that it is one of the few recent social causes not largely manned by students. That college students do generally pay for an education may not say much for their wisdom, but it certainly qualifies them as consumers; indeed, abused consumers, who pay mighty tuitions and then hope the school will not abruptly eliminate their major, cancel required courses, make wholesale departures from the catalog descriptions or stock the course with inept or unfit lecturers. In this perennial sellers' market, the university has unilaterally controlled everything from degree requirements to food.

Now, however, students are going to court over such matters as course changes, fees and quality of teaching. And though no high-level court has yet explicitly called the student a consumer, the trend in the Seventies has been to view education as a commodity; and in the legal waters, trends are everything.

The 1974 Family Education Rights and Privacy Act recognized the student's right to have access to his/her files, thus implicitly accepting the student-consumer concept. Records are, ultimately, what the student is buying, and learning institutions that fool with, falsify or otherwise devalue that (continued on page 174)Sue the bastards!(continued from page 121) property are violating the law. Students denied grades or credit on any grounds not purely academic should immediately open the phone book to Attorneys. "If . . . you can prove that the teacher was acting arbitrarily or . . . for reasons unrelated to the quality of your work, you have a chance of winning in court."--A.C.L.U.'s The Rights of Students. The Supreme Court's recent decision that students can sue school personnel for handsome damages makes it all the more interesting.

Most significant, though, is the current tendency of student consumers to question the product itself. What is sociology, for example, and what is merely teacher opinion? For that matter, is it possible to literally "get your money's worth" from the likes of Renaissance Poetry? Courts have recognized that the right to pursue prosperity includes the right to enough education to do so. Ergo, a lousy education is no education, and anyone paying for such a thing has been taken.

Indeed, many proprietary/vocational schools, such as career academies and diesel-truck-drivers' schools, have had the Federal Trade Commission all over them for making lofty, unsubstantiated educational claims--that their students gain higher income potential, adequate training for existing jobs and salable skills. The university makes no such overt claims, but they're generally presumed by everyone involved. The FTC has specifically charged naughty P/V schools with not providing accessible instructors or sufficient experience to qualify the graduate. The resemblance to many college programs is enough to keep a chancellor up nights, especially since the P/V crowd must now supply dropout rates, placement figures and salary ranges: proof of worth. Universities shudder at the idea of having to publish such data where the public can see it, but doesn't the taxpayer have the rights of an unrequited disc jockey or teamster?

Yes, says Duke law professor and contract-law savant William Van Alstyne, among others. "Contract law applies when colleges don't furnish what they promise"--an idea not lost on students, as the College Press Service's Diane Auerback notes: "Claiming that their college catalog constitutes a valid contract between student and university, they've sued their schools for breach of contract."

A teenager sues the San Francisco Unified School District for negligence for graduating him from high school at a fifth-grade reading level, thus withholding skills vital to his economic future. A Ph.D. candidate goes after American University for $650,000 for killing his major program and giving him inept advisors. A George Washington University student says her landscape-architecture program consists mostly of tracing and goes to court for a $900 refund. A Syracuse philosophy graduate student says that nonphilosophers teach philosophy courses totally unlike the catalog descriptions and wants his $4000 back, and tells a judge so. Ilene Ianniello sues the University of Bridgeport for subjecting her to a business-teaching course she calls "worthless."

Universities have hardly lain down and played dead in the face of this. In fact, few students can afford to go to the mat against the sheer mass of the schools' legal weaponry, which, says breach-of-contract attorney Robert Powell, "can take any stand against a student and then literally expense him to death in legal fees." Thus, Syracuse answered its philosopher with a $10,000 countersuit and Mrs. Ianniello had to scour New England for a lawyer--even the A.C.L.U. shied from her case.

The universities argue that a catalog isn't a legal contract to be taken literally and that the doctrine of substantial performance obliges them only to give your education the old college try. But underlying all of this is the basic question of who finally determines "academic quality" and the contents of the educational product--students, courts or the educational establishment. So far, few suits have challenged the schools' unstated right to decide what and how students will be taught, nor are judges eager to usurp it. But, notes College Press Service writer Neil Klotz, "the concept of students as consumers has arisen only because students found that . . . they were academic sharecroppers producing what industry and government told them was socially useful."

Even the National Education Association concedes that "as other institutions exist to serve their clients, schools at all levels exist so that people attending them can learn.... Students therefore have the right to substantial influence over the educational program," meaning everything from basic goals to grading methods. The A.C.L.U. minces no words: "You should demand whatever type of education you want."

In the immediate future, look for students' swarming back to activism against a new Goliath--inflation. A goldfish could barely get through college on $12,000, and tuition hikes and budget cuts have produced the widest outbreak of unruly campus confrontations since the Vietnam war.

But this time, worry the schools, general public sympathy just may be with the student--not as hairy bum but as fellow consumer.